If you receive this and you hate it and you don’t want to ever read it no matter what...that is fine; email me back and you will be deleted from my list (which is almost at the maximum anyway).

I attempt to post a new issue each Sunday by 2 or 3 pm central standard time (I sometimes fail at this attempt).

I try to include factual material only, along with my opinions (it should be clear which is which). I make an attempt to include as much of this week’s news as I possibly can. The first set of columns are intentionally designed for a quick read.

I do not accept any advertising nor do I charge for this publication. I write this principally to blow off steam in a nation where its people seemed have collectively lost their minds.

President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney give back-to-back speeches about terrorism, the U.S. prison in Guantanamo, and enhanced interrogation.

California votes down 5 additional tax initiatives by 2 to 1 even though the money spent to pass these initiatives was 10x the money spent against those initiatives. A 6^th proposition passed, which requires a balanced budget in California in order for the Legislature to get a cost-of-living raise.

The World Health Organization nixes using DDT to kill the mosquitoes which are killing millions of people in Africa, siding with environmentalists on this issue.

In less than 3 minutes, 53 prisoners are walked out of a Mexico prison by 8 uniformed men; this was well-organized, and the prisoners apparently had been let out of the cells a few minutes previously and were ready to go.

4 men arrested in New York in terrorist plot. 3 of them had been converted to radical Islam in prison.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) has formally called on the intelligence community to release the CIA documents which will either show that Pelosi is lying or telling the truth.

Cal Thomas, when commenting on all of the Democrats who voted against bringing detainees to the United States after demagoging Bush and Cheney for not closing down Guantanamo Prison: “The only politicians on Washington with convictions are in jail.”

Dick Morris: “In April, the recession looked like it would slow, and stocks went up; and unemployment at first looked like it was slowing. Obama’s policies have begun to push back our economic recover.”

Iran launches another test missile. Is this problem really going to be fixed with touch negotiations?

From Aussie (Aussiette?) Kim Landers, Lateline (I just like hearing her call the President oh-bomber):

NBC covers this, and, it appears without quotations from the speeches (however, you have to give David Gregory props for an unbiased evaluation)?

And some people do not like that Dick Cheney is speaking out; Bob Beckel, former campaign manager for Walter Mondale, is quite upset, and calls his speech slanderous, outrageous. In case you don’t think FoxNews gives equal time, watch this vid (this is why liberals and moderates watch FoxNews):

Now, if you are into this kind of thing, notice MSNBC, and their fair and balanced coverage:

And Rachel Maddow, on MSNBC (with guest Chris Hayes); again, this gives you the idea of the fair and balanced coverage on MSNBC (you don’t have to listen to the entire broadcast; it is the same thing all the way through):

[Notice, you have the entire broadcast on this topic, not a pieces taken from here and there. This is why FoxNews viewers are measured in the millions and MSNBC viewers are measured in the hundreds of thousands.]

Despite his leanings, George Stephanopoulos gives a fair representation of the two speeches:

If you want something non-political, here is a non-confrontational interview with Lynne Cheney:

http://www.gawkk.com/daily-show/channel (you have to scroll down and choose Gingrich and Stewart; excellent show; I have to admit, Jon Stewart is pretty funny)

Meet the Press, this past week, with Tim Kane and Michael Steele, was excellent:

1) Here is why Nancy Pelosi is flailing about, and trying to give a plausible explanation as to how she could be in a briefing about enhanced interrogation techniques and not object to the techniques: Pelosi has been one of the most vocal of those calling for a truth commission, with the idea of eventually prosecuting George W. Bush with war crimes. One area where she sees Bush as guilty is, he authorized torture. If Pelosi and other Democrats were aware of these methods years ago, and they did not object, then how can they accuse Bush of authorizing torture, as they, by their silence, authorized these exact same acts? Pelosi has said, there was nothing I could do. Congress is quite powerful; particularly the House of Representatives. They hold the purse strings. They can de-fund anything. In any case, this is why Pelosi’s story is important; she cannot just point at George Bush and call him some kind of a war criminal, if she had no problem with and raised no objection to the very crimes he is accused of committing.

2) In case you do not know, despite various Republicans calling for the resignation of Nancy Pelosi, we love her! She is becoming very well-known, recognizable, and once of the faces of the Democrat party. We could not ask for more (unless people saw Patrick Lahey as the face of the Democratic party).

3) Although I don’t care much for Lawrence O'Donnell, I do agree that the release of 500 prisoners from Gitmo may have been a bit much (a point which he makes, and then says we should have waterboarded them, although he does not believe in waterboarding anyone). I am still for keeping them all there until the War on Terror is over (which will be about the time that most of them are 127).

4) What are the problems with bringing terrorists from Guantanamo Bay to the United States and putting them into a maximum security prison? The biggest problem is, there are liberal lawyers and organizations out there which would immediately begin to give these detainees the rights of American citizens, which could give the detainees access to the outside world (via email accounts which would have to be established between the prisoner and his lawyer). As Obama himself said, there are dangerous terrorists who were taken on the battlefield but without some sort of gathering of evidence against them. The second problem is, if there was any mixture with the general population (which we are told right now, would never happen; but, once they are on U.S. soil, then lawyers are going to work to confer rights upon these terrorists), then there might be some conversion of other prisoners to radical Islam (which has happened already; 3 of the 4 men just picked up in New York were converted to radical Islam in prison). Thirdly, this prison or the city in which it is located becomes a possible target (do you want to see a nearby school seized by other terrorists?). Right this moment, we have a state-of-the-art prison located in a secure location where prisoners receive decent treatment and can be kept indefinitely. That place is the prison in Guantanamo Bay, also known as Club Gitmo.

5) Right now, club Gitmo remains open; President Obama has brought back military tribunals, which he railed against in his campaign; warrant less wiretapping continues unabated; we are still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan; and Obama retains the option of ordering enhanced interrogation. The only substantive change is, Obama released the enhanced interrogation memos, which will go down in history as one of the stupidest things a sitting president has ever done (chalk it up to Obama’s lack of experience in these matters).

6) Jim Webb, so-called blue-dog Democrat, has gone from enthusiastically supporting the shutting down of Club GItmo to stepping back and thinking about it.

7) Bill Samon observed that Obama mostly talked about himself in his Terrorism-Gitmo-Detainee speech; Cheney talked about the issues. I have the text for both speeches included in this issue. Like Bill Clinton, the number of times that President Obama uses the 1^st person singular I is stunning.

8) Someone on FoxNews observed that Obama first warned that we not ought to be pointing our fingers at one another for political gain, and then 28 times in his speech, berated the Bush administration for their decisions (many of which, Obama has barely changed).

9) One glaring example of Obama blaming Bush is, Obama cites the problem of the Guantanamo Bay Prison and the prisoners that were put there was Bush’s problem and mistake for establishing the prison in the first place. However, had this been such a easy thing to solve, you would have thought that Obama, during his hour-long speech, would have been able to say more than, “I really don’t have a solution, but this is the problem, and it is [of course] all Bush’s fault.” Not an exact quote. If there was an easy and clear decision to be made, Obama would have made it months ago, as would have George Bush. Okay, let me backtrack on that—there was a clear and easy decision: put all of the war detainees in a prison camp indefinitely until the War on Terror is over, preferably not on U.S. soil, which is what Bush did and what Obama will do.

10) One of the fundamental hypocrisies of Obama, as a caller to Rush pointed out, is that he ordered the cold-blooded execution of 3 teenagers playing pirates (who had, very likely, never actually harmed anyone before); to save one life. However, he continues to demagogue the harsh treatment of 3 prisoners (who are still alive and doing fine) during the Bush administration in order to save hundreds if not thousands of lives.

11) Why do conservative radio talk shows work, but their liberal counterparts do not? I have listened to a lot of liberal shows, and they do a lot of yelling and demagoging (so do some conservative shows, but they tend to do worse than the others). Conservative shows talk about the issues, and criticize the Republican party quite often and quite vocally. This is why those who listen to Rush Limbaugh, for instance, are far more informed than those who listen to NPR, liberal talk shows, or MSNBC for that matter (research bears this out—those who watch O’Reilly or listen to Rush are generally far better informed than those who get their news elsewhere).

12) According to one Chrysler dealer whom I listened to, these dealerships do not cost Chrysler any money. They are separate entities (much like the realitors in a reality company). If they make money, it is on them; if they lose money, it is on them. Shutting these dealerships down will not save Chrysler any money. This may explain why so many dealerships are suing Chrysler (I wonder what will be most expensive? Leaving these dealerships open or litigating these suits?)

13) I am not sure who made these points, but they are important. Right now, as we stand today, Obama is proposing his first year in office with 4x the deficit of George Bush; and for deficits to keep climbing for most of his years (it will be worse if our economy does not turn around). Bear in mind, this is without nationalized health care, without increased funding for education and without Obama’s cap and trade energy policy. If you think we are in a tailspin now, just think what will happen if Obama gets any one of these things through? Without the changes Obama wants to make, half of the budget this next year is borrowed (or printed) money. He has only begun to spend.

14) Conservative Republicans can take back Congress and the White House. California’s ballot initiative election shows us that. If Republicans hold to conservative values, Americans will vote for them.

90 members of the Senate vote against funding Obama’s moving prisoners from Club GItmo to elsewhere without having a plan first. 6 Senators vote to fund his (lack of a) plan.

$3 billion: the amount of money Arnold Schwartzenegger and the California legislature have spent on embryonic stem cell research. Do you Californians wonder why your budget is in free fall? For the record, although there have been many medical discoveries based upon adult stem cell research, there are none yet for embryonic stem cell research.

[Even though Saturday Night Live is closed for the season, this applies to all shows with some political humor]

President Obama admitting that George Bush had some pretty good ideas; and going through and ticking off the ones which he stayed with.

Nancy Pelosi, reading her statement and taking questions from the press—this could be pure gold.

Those Democrats who voted against giving Obama money to close down Club Gitmo without any detailed plans.

Penetta, long-time California Democrat, puts the country first and comes out and publically tells us that the CIA does not lie to Congress.

Democrat Jim Webb does not want to shut down the prison in Guantanamo Bay or to treat terrorists there as if they were American citizens with the rights of American citizens who have committed a criminal act.

Obama telling us that we ought not to be pointing our fingers at one another in pure partisan politics, and then spends the rest of his hour-long speech castigating the Bush administration over its response to the terrorist threat (28 times by one count).

What demonstrable proof do you have that any Al Qaeda member was recruited because of our prison in Guantanamo Bay?

When you hear a news report that enthusiastically tells you that the increase in unemployment was not as bad as was expected, and you think that is good news.

If you think that Obama’s policies with regards to Club Gitmo, terrorists, Iraq or Afghanistan are markedly different from George Bush’s.

If you think that ACORN is only a slightly left-leaning community organization. There is an incredible money component to their corruption.

This one is not difficult to make. Even though our economy is struggling to right itself, Obama continues to do exactly the opposite of what would help the recovery along. Therefore, we can look forward to at least 6 months of continued rising unemployment (I think that we are going to see years of high unemployment, above the 8% level).

No matter how bad our economy gets, the left-leaning main stream media will not run story after story after story on their front pages about how bad the economy is. You will be able to find out how bad the economy is, but it will not be the lead story on the evening news; nor will it be front page news (as was the case exactly 1 year ago, when the economy was fine).

As a corollary to the above, it would be reasonable to look back and FDR and his lack of success with our economy and how raising taxes caused our stock markets to further tank (which Obama will do). However, newspapers will not be running front page stories on this either.

Obama, after much soul-searching, and letting a few people out of prison or trying them, will keep Club Gitmo open, because it is a rational, thoughtful place to put our enemies. We will either see him do this soul-searching in additional, campaign-type speeches, or Congress will simply shut him down in this regard.

Early on, after Obama had been elected, I said he would not shut down Club Gitmo. Then, on day 2 or day 3, he said that he would. So, on my prophecies, I think I either retracted that or said, “I guess I was wrong.” Cheney is winning the argument here; and Obama has even given several arguments in favor of having a place for terrorists who are violent and we have no real place for them and no court system for them.

[This cartoon was more on point during the election, when we saw all of these stories; we don’t see them now]

At the beginning of last year, there were dozens of stories on the economy and how bad everything was—many of these front page stories—but, now that Obama is president, even though the economy actually is bad (it was not when these stories began to find their way into the media), we do not have all of these stories about the horrible economy coming to the front pages. These stories are there, but they are not front page news. The media is very invested in Obama, so, even though the news is bad, they are not going to tell you—as I had predicted months ago.

Cheney’s speech on Gitmo and torture was substantive and meaningful; Obama’s speech was campaign fodder still. Obama is able to do one thing really well: give speeches. So he continues to do so. He managed to give a very lengthy speech, but without a clue as to what we will do with prisoners who are terrorists and against whom, we do not have enough evidence to prosecute in a normal U.S. court. These are people who need to stay in prison forever. Obama classified these various prisoners, including this particular classification, but gave no solutions. Again, this is a campaign speech, not one of substance.

You may recall that one way I suggested that the federal government bail out the failing press is by providing a free news service for them (like AP). We are not there yet, but the Obama White House already has its own news crew and has produced at least one news report. The NCAA women’s basketball team winners got invited to the White House, and no press was allowed to photograph it, but Obama TV simply released their own video on the meeting. Maybe they are just getting their feet wet, to see what sort of a response the media gives this.

Dick Cheney has been out there giving interviews, and, over the past couple months, his approval ratings have gone up 8 points. Where was this when he was Vice President? With the exception of the overspending of the Bush administration (which has been overblown) and a few other things, Bush was a good (not great) president, and now, that his policies are being examined, people are coming to recognize this.

Dick Cheney is not the only one out there talking. Liz Cheney, his daughter, not only took on a tough interview by Anderson Cooper, but acquitted herself, disputing with reason and facts, all of Anderson Cooper’s liberal arguments. She handled Anderson Cooper better than (I am sorry to say), Sarah Palin handled her interview with Katie Couric. I hope that Liz Cheney takes this further. I would love to see her in any political position (including as press secretary). She gives as good as she gets.

"We were able to hold it off with George Bush. The idea that we might find ourselves fighting with the Obama administration over these powers is really stunning." -- Unnamed and dismayed human rights advocate, on legalizing indefinite detention of alleged terrorists,

If hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue, then the flip-flops on previously denounced anti-terror measures are the homage that Barack Obama pays to George Bush. Within 125 days, Obama has adopted with only minor modifications huge swaths of the entire, allegedly lawless Bush program.

The latest flip-flop is the restoration of military tribunals. During the 2008 campaign, Obama denounced them repeatedly, calling them an "enormous failure." Obama suspended them upon his swearing-in. Now they're back.

Of course, Obama will never admit in word what he's doing in deed. As in his rhetorically brilliant national-security speech yesterday claiming to have undone Bush's moral travesties, the military commissions flip-flop is accompanied by the usual Obama three-step: (a) excoriate the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy.

Cosmetic changes such as Obama's declaration that "we will give detainees greater latitude in selecting their own counsel." Laughable. High-toned liberal law firms are climbing over each other for the frisson of representing these miscreants in court.

What about disallowing evidence received under coercive interrogation? Hardly new, notes former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy. Under the existing rules, military judges have that authority, and they exercised it under the Bush administration to dismiss charges against al-Qaeda operative Mohammed al-Qahtani on precisely those grounds.

On Guantanamo, it's Obama's fellow Democrats who have suddenly discovered the wisdom of Bush's choice. In open rebellion against Obama's pledge to shut it down, the Senate voted 90 to 6 to reject appropriating a single penny until the president explains where he intends to put the inmates. Sen. James Webb, the de facto Democratic authority on national defense, wants the closing to be put on hold. And on Tuesday, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, no Gitmo inmates on American soil -- not even in American jails.

That doesn't leave a lot of places. The home countries won't take them. Europe is recalcitrant. Saint Helena needs refurbishing. Elba didn't work out too well the first time. And Devil's Island is now a tourist destination. Gitmo is starting to look good again.

Observers of all political stripes are stunned by how much of the Bush national security agenda is being adopted by this new Democratic government. Victor Davis Hanson (National Review) offers a partial list: "The Patriot Act, wiretaps, e-mail intercepts, military tribunals, Predator drone attacks, Iraq (i.e., slowing the withdrawal), Afghanistan (i.e., the surge) -- and now Guantanamo."

Jack Goldsmith (The New Republic) adds: rendition -- turning over terrorists seized abroad to foreign countries; state secrets -- claiming them in court to quash legal proceedings on rendition and other erstwhile barbarisms; and the denial of habeas corpus -- to detainees in Afghanistan's Bagram prison, indistinguishable logically and morally from Guantanamo.

What does it all mean? Democratic hypocrisy and demagoguery? Sure, but in Washington, opportunism and cynicism are hardly news.

There is something much larger at play -- an undeniable, irresistible national interest that, in the end, beyond the cheap politics, asserts itself. The urgencies and necessities of the actual post-9/11 world, as opposed to the fanciful world of the opposition politician, present a rather narrow range of acceptable alternatives.

Among them: reviving the tradition of military tribunals, used historically by George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Winfield Scott, Abraham Lincoln, Arthur MacArthur and Franklin Roosevelt. And inventing Guantanamo -- accessible, secure, offshore and nicely symbolic (the tradition of island exile for those outside the pale of civilization is a venerable one) -- a quite brilliant choice for the placement of terrorists, some of whom, the Bush administration immediately understood, would have to be detained without trial in a war that could be endless.

The genius of democracy is that the rotation of power forces the opposition to come to its senses when it takes over. When the new guys, brought to power by popular will, then adopt the policies of the old guys, a national consensus is forged and a new legitimacy established.

That's happening before our eyes. The Bush policies in the war on terror won't have to await vindication by historians. Obama is doing it day by day. His denials mean nothing. Look at his deeds.

BAIER: U.S. officials confirm to FOX News that Iran test-fired an upgraded surface to surface missile with a range of about, they say, 1,200 miles today.

And this is the Sajil-2 missile. And that would potentially put it in striking distance of Israel and American bases in the Persian Gulf. U.S. officials telling us it is the first successful test of a solid fuel missile, which is a missile easier to move around and easier to hide than the current liquid fuel options.

What does this mean for the U.S. and for Israel? We're back with the panel - Charles?

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, the timing is interesting. I think, in part, it's Iran just continuing a program in which it wants to overhaul the region. It's showing how it is advancing unrelentingly on the technology of the weaponry, the nukes themselves, and, here, the means of delivery.

But secondly, it has to deal with the launching of the Iranian presidential campaign. The president of Iran, who is running against moderates, is making a statement in a case here.

KRAUTHAMMER: Yes. He is making - the moderates arguing against him that all of these provocative measures in the past and now would threaten relations with the world and isolate Iran.

And what does he say? Look what's happened. I did all of these measures advancing our program, ignoring and provoking America, and what do we get in return? An administration with an outstretched hand that's going to open negotiations and wants to relieve our isolation.

So he says that the program I supported of aggressiveness and not stopping in the face of criticism abroad is giving us, a, a program of nukes, and, b, acceptance in the world and acquiescence by the United States.

[The Bill O’Reilly Talking Points were great this week; these talking points can be accessed as videos at:

As you may know, NBC News has emerged as the most pro-Obama TV news operation in the country. Its cable news operation openly shills for the president and did so during the election. And when some CNBC financial commentators began criticizing Mr. Obama, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt and NBC President Jeff Zucker went over to CNBC in person to deal with the situation. GE owns NBC.

Since that time, very little criticism of the president has been heard on CNBC. Perhaps it's just a coincidence.

On April 23, I reported that GE is heavily investing in green technology, and if the carbon tax is passed GE will try to get billions of dollars in contracts in the cap and trade program. Because GE is in big trouble - already receiving $139 billion in federal insurance to shore up its financial arm - it is now going full-tilt to get more federal dollars.

According to reporting by Andrew Wilkow, a Sirius radio host, GE is banking on government-ordered computerized health records. If that passes, GE's technology could be used, earning the company billions.

To make that happen, GE has appointed former Senator Tom Daschle to its health advisory board. Daschle, you may remember, was President Obama's choice as secretary of Health and Human Services until a tax scandal derailed him. But there is no question Daschle has big time connections to the Obama White House. We asked the senator for an interview. So far, he's ducking us.

So obviously there is a huge conflict of interest here. NBC News is in the tank for Obama, even as its parent company is trying to secure billions from the feds. And if you don't believe me, listen to Obama adviser Kareem Dale:

KAREEM DALE, SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO OBAMA: At the White House, as we always like to say, we love MSNBC.

A fascinating footnote: Neither NBC News nor GE is hiding any of this. In a public relations video, the cards are laid on the table:

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jeff Immelt himself was very committed to a broader set of issues affecting energy policy, greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, etc. Ecomagination is a business imperative for GE.

So it is no accident that NBC News is promoting government run health care, as well as President Obama's policies in general.

Now if this were any other industry, there would be a federal investigation. But the press is largely above the law. There is no oversight on the press at all. We can do pretty much what we want to do.

Summing up: A major American news operation is giving favorable coverage to a president while its parent company stands to profit dramatically if Mr. Obama's agenda succeeds. Corrupt? You make the call.

Well, it took them a few days, but the far-left Times is now pounding the drum to get those prisoner abuse pictures released to the world.

In its lead editorial Sunday, the paper wrote: "Just as Mr. Obama was wrong to reverse field on the military tribunals, he was wrong do so on the release of the photographs showing American soldiers abusing prisoners ... These pictures will come out through the courts or through the press. It is better for those same soldiers for Mr. Obama to release them ..."

Of course, that is insane, and just about every military adviser in the Obama administration knows that, which is why the president acceded to their wishes. Any abuse pictures will harm the American military.

The New York Times simply wants another trumped-up scandal it can blame on Bush in order to further damage the Republican Party. The crazy paper could not care less about the safety of American forces.

It is time for American vets to get involved here. You guys have power. You can confront organizations like The Times and NBC News, which are pushing to have the pictures released. I hope the vets will stand up for their comrades in the field.

And then there's the Obama-ACORN connection. There are allegations that The Times killed a story last fall connecting the Obama campaign to ACORN, which is currently under investigation in 14 states for various campaign illegalities.

O'REILLY: Last fall before Election Day, The New York Times was investigating ACORN's ties to the Obama campaign. The Times reporter on the story, Stephanie Strom, called one of her sources and said this:

STEPHANIE STROM, NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER: Hi, Anita, it's Stephanie. I have just been asked by my bosses to stand down. They want me to hold off on coming to Washington. Sorry, I take my orders from higher up sometimes. Anyway, I'm sorry about this, and we'll still be in touch. Take care. And let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. Take care. Bye-bye.

Well, that greatly embarrassed The Times, causing its ombudsman to swing into action.

Clark Hoyt began his investigation. He called us. We gave him the information he asked for and then on Sunday, Hoyt wrote this: "O'Reilly played part of a voicemail message from (Stephanie) Strom to (Anita) MonCrief canceling their appointment but did not tell his viewers that he had deleted the reason: the article running the next day spelling out ACORN's partisanship problems."

Hoyt is implying that I misled "Factor" viewers. Of course, that's a blatant lie.

O'REILLY: To be fair, The Times did run a story before the election about ACORN's partisan approach, but stopped there.

So Hoyt writes I didn't tell you about the article I told you about. Am I in "The Twilight Zone"?

STROM: We're running a story tonight for tomorrow that pretty well lays out the partisanship problems that Project Vote may have based on a report that I got. So they think that that's going to - that's going to be the story about the partisanship issue.

Now, we asked Hoyt to come on the program, but of course he's hiding under his desk. How could he possibly defend his deceit?

Still don't believe me? Well, there is an e-mail from Times reporter Strom to Ms. MonCrief that says: "Am also onto Obama connection, sadly. Would love to have the donor lists. As for helping the Republicans, they're already onto this like white on rice. SIGH!"

And here's what Clark Hoyt, the ombudsman, wrote about that: "Was Strom betraying her own political leanings or was she expressing sympathy for MonCrief, who was unhappy about possibly hurting her own candidate? Strom said she does not know what was on her mind eight months ago."

The New York Times is a dishonest publication in business to promote a far-left point of view. Strong evidence suggests the paper killed a story linking ACORN to some Obama people. Instead they ran a general piece stating ACORN has a left-wing bias, knowing that story would be largely ignored while the Obama connection would not be.

In what might be the biggest financial-political con in history, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN, is under "The Factor" microscope.

Who are they? ACORN is a far-left organization that signs up voters, lobbies for the poor and promotes low-income housing.

Who runs them? Up until recently, Wade Rathke and his brother Dale held much power within ACORN. But last year, Dale Rathke was exposed. Apparently he embezzled close to $1 million from the organization. ACORN declined to press charges, a reimbursement deal was struck, and the Rathke brothers resigned, but Wade is still deeply involved. Right now a woman named Bertha Lewis is in charge. She is out of New York City.

How does ACORN get money? Congressman John Boehner says ACORN affiliates in just 11 states have received more than $31 million in taxpayer funding, at least $11 million last year alone.

Also, a variety of ACORN affiliates, like the American Institute for Social Justice, give money directly to the parent organization. Social Justice, for example, has given ACORN more than $7 million in grants. The far-left SEIU, the service workers union, pays ACORN on a regular basis. Recently, ACORN mounted a campaign against Wal-Mart. The SEIU paid them $500,000 to do that.

By the way, former ACORN leader Wade Rathke founded the SEIU in New Orleans. As the church lady once said, how convenient.

So it is obvious that ACORN is a huge money-generating organization. But where does the money go?

"The Factor" and the "Glenn Beck" show traced the money to an address in New Orleans on Elysian Fields Avenue, an old funeral parlor that is being used as a money depot for ACORN and as many as 268 other far-left organizations. The doors were locked when "Factor" producer Dan Bank approached, but he did find an ACORN employee.

DAN BANK, "FACTOR" PRODUCER: Excuse me, ma'am? I'm trying to go into the ACORN house. I'm wondering if you know what exactly is going on in there?

BANK: Well, I have here over 270 organizations that use that as their mailing address for millions of dollars going in. Do you know what that's all about?

We traced that woman. She is an ACORN employee. Then Dan went over to ACORN's other building on Canal Street:

BANK: Do you know why? Was it because his brother embezzled the money? Excuse me. I have some questions about Mr. Wade Rathke. Yeah, I'm wondering where Mr. Wade Rathke is?

Obviously, ACORN employees were not talking, but they should be talking - to the FBI.

With millions of dollars in play - some of it tax money - we don't know where the money is. We do know that seven ACORN employees were convicted of crimes in Washington state, and a number of other criminal investigations are underway. In Nevada and Pennsylvania, charges against ACORN people have already been brought.

But all of that pales next to the millions of dollars pouring into an old funeral home in New Orleans. Something is very wrong here.

Much has been written about the Insight, Honda's new low-priced hybrid. We've been told how much carbon dioxide it produces, how its dashboard encourages frugal driving by glowing green when you're easy on the throttle and how it is the dawn of all things. The beginning of days.

So far, though, you have not been told what it's like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place.

So here goes. It's terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It's the first car I've ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn't have to drive it any more.

The biggest problem, and it's taken me a while to work this out, because all the other problems are so vast and so cancerous, is the gearbox. For reasons known only to itself, Honda has fitted the Insight with something called constantly variable transmission (CVT).

It doesn't work. Put your foot down in a normal car and the revs climb in tandem with the speed. In a CVT car, the revs spool up quickly and then the speed rises to match them. It feels like the clutch is slipping. It feels horrid.

And the sound is worse. The Honda's petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else's crying baby on an airliner. It's worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you'd have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.

So you're sitting there with the engine screaming its head off, and your ears bleeding, and you're doing only 23mph because that's about the top speed, and you're thinking things can't get any worse, and then they do because you run over a small piece of grit.

Because the Honda has two motors, one that runs on petrol and one that runs on batteries, it is more expensive to make than a car that has one. But since the whole point of this car is that it could be sold for less than Toyota's Smugmobile, the engineers have plainly peeled the suspension components to the bone. The result is a ride that beggars belief.

There's more. Normally, Hondas feel as though they have been screwed together by eye surgeons. This one, however, feels as if it's been made from steel so thin, you could read through it. And the seats, finished in pleblon, are designed specifically, it seems, to ruin your skeleton. This is hairy-shirted eco-ism at its very worst.

However, as a result of all this, prices start at £15,490 - that's £3,000 or so less than the cost of the Prius. But at least with the Toyota there is no indication that you're driving a car with two motors. In the Insight you are constantly reminded, not only by the idiotic dashboard, which shows leaves growing on a tree when you ease off the throttle (pass the sick bucket), but by the noise and the ride and the seats. And also by the hybrid system Honda has fitted.

In a Prius the electric motor can, though almost never does, power the car on its own. In the Honda the electric motor is designed to "assist" the petrol engine, providing more get-up-and-go when the need arises. The net result is this: in a Prius the transformation from electricity to petrol is subtle. In the Honda there are all sorts of jerks and clunks.

And for what? For sure, you could get 60 or more mpg if you were careful. And that's not bad for a spacious five-door hatchback. But for the same money you could have a Golf diesel, which will be even more economical. And hasn't been built out of rice paper to keep costs down.

Of course, I am well aware that there are a great many people in the world who believe that the burning of fossil fuels will one day kill all the Dutch and that something must be done.

They will see the poor ride, the woeful performance, the awful noise and the spine-bending seats as a price worth paying. But what about the eco-cost of building the car in the first place?

Honda has produced a graph that seems to suggest that making the Insight is only marginally more energy-hungry than making a normal car. And that the slight difference is more than negated by the resultant fuel savings.

Hmmm. I would not accuse Honda of telling porkies. That would be foolish. But I cannot see how making a car with two motors costs the same in terms of resources as making a car with one.

The nickel for the battery has to come from somewhere. Canada, usually. It has to be shipped to Japan, not on a sailing boat, I presume. And then it must be converted, not in a tree house, into a battery, and then that battery must be transported, not on an ox cart, to the Insight production plant in Suzuka. And then the finished car has to be shipped, not by Thor Heyerdahl, to Britain, where it can be transported, not by wind, to the home of a man with a beard who thinks he's doing the world a favour.

Why doesn't he just buy a Range Rover, which is made from local components, just down the road? No, really - weird-beards buy locally produced meat and vegetables for eco-reasons. So why not apply the same logic to cars?

At this point you will probably dismiss what I'm saying as the rantings of a petrolhead, and think that I have my head in the sand.

That's not true. While I have yet to be convinced that man's 3% contribution to the planet's greenhouse gases affects the climate, I do recognise that oil is a finite resource and that as it becomes more scarce, the political ramifications could well be dire. I therefore absolutely accept the urgent need for alternative fuels.

But let me be clear that hybrid cars are designed solely to milk the guilt genes of the smug and the foolish. And that pure electric cars, such as the G-Wiz and the Tesla, don't work at all because they are just too inconvenient.

Since about 1917 the car industry has not had a technological revolution - unlike, say, the world of communications or film. There has never been a 3G moment at Peugeot nor a need to embrace DVD at Nissan. There has been no VHS/Betamax battle between Fiat and Renault.

Car makers, then, have had nearly a century to develop and hone the principles of suck, squeeze, bang, blow. And they have become very good at it.

But now comes the need to throw away the heart of the beast, the internal combustion engine, and start again. And, critically, the first of the new cars with their new power systems must be better than the last of the old ones. Or no one will buy them. That's a tall order. That's like dragging Didier Drogba onto a cricket pitch and expecting him to be better than Ian Botham.

And here's the kicker. That's exactly what Honda has done with its other eco-car, the Clarity. Instead of using a petrol engine to charge up the electric motor's batteries, as happens on the Insight, the Clarity uses hydrogen: the most abundant gas in the universe.

The only waste product is water. The car feels like a car. And, best of all, the power it produces is so enormous, it can be used by day to get you to 120mph and by night to run all the electrical appliances in your house. This is not science fiction. There is a fleet of Claritys running around California right now.

There are problems to be overcome. Making hydrogen is a fuel-hungry process, and there is no infrastructure. But Alexander Fleming didn't look at his mould and think, "Oh dear, no one will put that in their mouth", and give up.

I would have hoped, therefore, that Honda had diverted every penny it had into making hydrogen work rather than stopping off on the way to make a half-arsed halfway house for fools and madmen.

The only hope I have is that there are enough fools and madmen out there who will buy an Insight to look sanctimonious outside the school gates. And that the cash this generates can be used to develop something a bit more constructive.

We students of Bible Doctrine are acutely aware of the blight that moral degeneracy has become on our society, but this lunacy has now become the linchpin of an argument that will, assuredly, result in the deaths of thousands of American citizens.

Every time I see one of these phony jerks, pontificating from their precarious perch about "torture", I want to vomit! It strikes me that they carp endlessly about an issue that is nothing more than their hatred for everything George Bush, without stopping to consider for even a moment what consequences their actions are going to produce.

For every bonehead in America who buys into this bullcrap I want to declare this message.... IF WE DON'T HAVE ADVANCED WARNING OF A TERRORIST ATTACK, PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE!!!!

Die, dead, decease, murdered, slaughtered, kaput, no more...and we are talking about thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, who are placing their blind faith in an empty suit who decries our "loss of a moral compass".

I suggest that his mythical "compass" nonsense will be small comfort to the families and friends of those who will lay, torn to bits by a massive bomb, or gasping for breath from a chemical attack, when this terrible reality comes to pass.

It comes down to a question of equivalents: Which is worse, measuring the circumstances by any moral index; exposing a psychotic killer to what amounts to TEMPORARY DISCOMFORT, or allowing thousands of innocents to be murdered? It astounds me that anyone, of any political persuasion, can fail to understand this issue clearly!

I assume that Obama, and Governor Girly Man, and Jessie Ventura, Garafalo, Pelosi, Reid, et all, ad nauseum, believe that we can use bland, unoffensive methods of gathering intel to prevent another attack on our soil, but what if they are wrong? These morons are gambling with the lives of our citizens, not merely throwing a chip into a poker pot.

Let me phrase it another way....we are faced with two repugnant scenarios; coercing a scrap of pond scum, who deserves far worse than an unvoluntary bath, and watching first responders scrape the bodies of Americans off the sidewalk...which is worse?

The pseudo-morals of these irresponsible cretins are going to get people killed, and the tragic thing is, they will only come to that horrible realization after the fact. When this happens I sincerely pray that the people who have stood up in public, and railed against "water boarding", are exposed in headlines across this country for what they have done. I hope millions rally to demand that this Garafalo woman, and Obama, et al, explain why their stupid ideas failed to protect us. They should be disgraced and banished to some remote island.

These are extraordinary times for our country. We are confronting an historic economic crisis. We are fighting two wars. We face a range of challenges that will define the way that Americans will live in the 21st century. There is no shortage of work to be done, or responsibilities to bear.

And we have begun to make progress. Just this week, we have taken steps to protect American consumers and homeowners, and to reform our system of government contracting so that we better protect our people while spending our money more wisely. The engines of our economy are slowly beginning to turn, and we are working toward historic reform of health care and energy. I welcome the hard work that has been done by the Congress on these and other issues.

In the midst of all these challenges, however, my single most important responsibility as President is to keep the American people safe. That is the first thing that I think about when I wake up in the morning. It is the last thing that I think about when I go to sleep at night.

This responsibility is only magnified in an era when an extremist ideology threatens our people, and technology gives a handful of terrorists the potential to do us great harm. We are less than eight years removed from the deadliest attack on American soil in our history. We know that al Qaeda is actively planning to attack us again. We know that this threat will be with us for a long time, and that we must use all elements of our power to defeat it.

Already, we have taken several steps to achieve that goal. For the first time since 2002, we are providing the necessary resources and strategic direction to take the fight to the extremists who attacked us on 9/11 in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We are investing in the 21st century military and intelligence capabilities that will allow us to stay one step ahead of a nimble enemy. We have re-energized a global non-proliferation regime to deny the world's most dangerous people access to the world's deadliest weapons, and launched an effort to secure all loose nuclear materials within four years. We are better protecting our border, and increasing our preparedness for any future attack or natural disaster. We are building new partnerships around the world to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates. And we have renewed American diplomacy so that we once again have the strength and standing to truly lead the world.

These steps are all critical to keeping America secure. But I believe with every fiber of my being that in the long run we also cannot keep this country safe unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values. The documents that we hold in this very hall - the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights -are not simply words written into aging parchment. They are the foundation of liberty and justice in this country, and a light that shines for all who seek freedom, fairness, equality and dignity in the world.

I stand here today as someone whose own life was made possible by these documents. My father came to our shores in search of the promise that they offered. My mother made me rise before dawn to learn of their truth when I lived as a child in a foreign land. My own American journey was paved by generations of citizens who gave meaning to those simple words - "to form a more perfect union." I have studied the Constitution as a student; I have taught it as a teacher; I have been bound by it as a lawyer and legislator. I took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief, and as a citizen, I know that we must never - ever - turn our back on its enduring principles for expedience sake.

I make this claim not simply as a matter of idealism. We uphold our most cherished values not only because doing so is right, but because it strengthens our country and keeps us safe. Time and again, our values have been our best national security asset - in war and peace; in times of ease and in eras of upheaval.

Fidelity to our values is the reason why the United States of America grew from a small string of colonies under the writ of an empire to the strongest nation in the world.

It is the reason why enemy soldiers have surrendered to us in battle, knowing they'd receive better treatment from America's armed forces than from their own government.

It is the reason why America has benefited from strong alliances that amplified our power, and drawn a sharp and moral contrast with our adversaries.

It is the reason why we've been able to overpower the iron fist of fascism, outlast the iron curtain of communism, and enlist free nations and free people everywhere in common cause and common effort.

From Europe to the Pacific, we have been a nation that has shut down torture chambers and replaced tyranny with the rule of law. That is who we are. And where terrorists offer only the injustice of disorder and destruction, America must demonstrate that our values and institutions are more resilient than a hateful ideology.

After 9/11, we knew that we had entered a new era - that enemies who did not abide by any law of war would present new challenges to our application of the law; that our government would need new tools to protect the American people, and that these tools would have to allow us to prevent attacks instead of simply prosecuting those who try to carry them out.

Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. And I believe that those decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that - too often - our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us - Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens - fell silent.

In other words, we went off course. And this is not my assessment alone. It was an assessment that was shared by the American people, who nominated candidates for President from both major parties who, despite our many differences, called for a new approach - one that rejected torture, and recognized the imperative of closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Now let me be clear: we are indeed at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates. We do need to update our institutions to deal with this threat. But we must do so with an abiding confidence in the rule of law and due process; in checks and balances and accountability. For reasons that I will explain, the decisions that were made over the last eight years established an ad hoc legal approach for fighting terrorism that was neither effective nor sustainable - a framework that failed to rely on our legal traditions and time-tested institutions; that failed to use our values as a compass. And that is why I took several steps upon taking office to better protect the American people.

First, I banned the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques by the United States of America.

I know some have argued that brutal methods like water-boarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more. As Commander-in-Chief, I see the intelligence, I bear responsibility for keeping this country safe, and I reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation. What's more, they undermine the rule of law. They alienate us in the world. They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America. They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured. In short, they did not advance our war and counter-terrorism efforts - they undermined them, and that is why I ended them once and for all.

The arguments against these techniques did not originate from my Administration. As Senator McCain once said, torture "serves as a great propaganda tool for those who recruit people to fight against us." And even under President Bush, there was recognition among members of his Administration - including a Secretary of State, other senior officials, and many in the military and intelligence community - that those who argued for these tactics were on the wrong side of the debate, and the wrong side of history. We must leave these methods where they belong - in the past. They are not who we are. They are not America.

The second decision that I made was to order the closing of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

For over seven years, we have detained hundreds of people at Guantanamo. During that time, the system of Military Commissions at Guantanamo succeeded in convicting a grand total of three suspected terrorists. Let me repeat that: three convictions in over seven years. Instead of bringing terrorists to justice, efforts at prosecution met setbacks, cases lingered on, and in 2006 the Supreme Court invalidated the entire system. Meanwhile, over five hundred and twenty-five detainees were released from Guantanamo under the Bush Administration. Let me repeat that: two-thirds of the detainees were released before I took office and ordered the closure of Guantanamo.

There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world. Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al Qaeda that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law. Indeed, part of the rationale for establishing Guantanamo in the first place was the misplaced notion that a prison there would be beyond the law - a proposition that the Supreme Court soundly rejected. Meanwhile, instead of serving as a tool to counter-terrorism, Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.

So the record is clear: rather than keep us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security. It is a rallying cry for our enemies. It sets back the willingness of our allies to work with us in fighting an enemy that operates in scores of countries. By any measure, the costs of keeping it open far exceed the complications involved in closing it. That is why I argued that it should be closed throughout my campaign. And that is why I ordered it closed within one year.

The third decision that I made was to order a review of all the pending cases at Guantanamo.

I knew when I ordered Guantanamo closed that it would be difficult and complex. There are 240 people there who have now spent years in legal limbo. In dealing with this situation, we do not have the luxury of starting from scratch. We are cleaning up something that is - quite simply - a mess; a misguided experiment that has left in its wake a flood of legal challenges that my Administration is forced to deal with on a constant basis, and that consumes the time of government officials whose time should be spent on better protecting our country.

Indeed, the legal challenges that have sparked so much debate in recent weeks in Washington would be taking place whether or not I decided to close Guantanamo. For example, the court order to release seventeen Uighur detainees took place last fall - when George Bush was President. The Supreme Court that invalidated the system of prosecution at Guantanamo in 2006 was overwhelmingly appointed by Republican Presidents. In other words, the problem of what to do with Guantanamo detainees was not caused by my decision to close the facility; the problem exists because of the decision to open Guantanamo in the first place.

There are no neat or easy answers here. But I can tell you that the wrong answer is to pretend like this problem will go away if we maintain an unsustainable status quo. As President, I refuse to allow this problem to fester. Our security interests won't permit it. Our courts won't allow it. And neither should our conscience.

Now, over the last several weeks, we have seen a return of the politicization of these issues that have characterized the last several years. I understand that these problems arouse passions and concerns. They should. We are confronting some of the most complicated questions that a democracy can face. But I have no interest in spending our time re-litigating the policies of the last eight years. I want to solve these problems, and I want to solve them together as Americans.

And we will be ill-served by some of the fear-mongering that emerges whenever we discuss this issue. Listening to the recent debate, I've heard words that are calculated to scare people rather than educate them; words that have more to do with politics than protecting our country. So I want to take this opportunity to lay out what we are doing, and how we intend to resolve these outstanding issues. I will explain how each action that we are taking will help build a framework that protects both the American people and the values that we hold dear. And I will focus on two broad areas: first, issues relating to Guantanamo and our detention policy; second, issues relating to security and transparency.

Let me begin by disposing of one argument as plainly as I can: we are not going to release anyone if it would endanger our national security, nor will we release detainees within the United States who endanger the American people. Where demanded by justice and national security, we will seek to transfer some detainees to the same type of facilities in which we hold all manner of dangerous and violent criminals within our borders - highly secure prisons that ensure the public safety. As we make these decisions, bear in mind the following fact: nobody has ever escaped from one of our federal "supermax" prisons, which hold hundreds of convicted terrorists. As Senator Lindsey Graham said: "The idea that we cannot find a place to securely house 250-plus detainees within the United States is not rational."

We are currently in the process of reviewing each of the detainee cases at Guantanamo to determine the appropriate policy for dealing with them. As we do so, we are acutely aware that under the last Administration, detainees were released only to return to the battlefield. That is why we are doing away with the poorly planned, haphazard approach that let those detainees go in the past. Instead, we are treating these cases with the care and attention that the law requires and our security demands. Going forward, these cases will fall into five distinct categories.

First, when feasible, we will try those who have violated American criminal laws in federal courts - courts provided for by the United States Constitution. Some have derided our federal courts as incapable of handling the trials of terrorists. They are wrong. Our courts and juries of our citizens are tough enough to convict terrorists, and the record makes that clear. Ramzi Yousef tried to blow up the World Trade Center - he was convicted in our courts, and is serving a life sentence in U.S. prison. Zaccarias Moussaoui has been identified as the 20th 9/11 hijacker - he was convicted in our courts, and he too is serving a life sentence in prison. If we can try those terrorists in our courts and hold them in our prisons, then we can do the same with detainees from Guantanamo.

Recently, we prosecuted and received a guilty plea from a detainee - al-Marri - in federal court after years of legal confusion. We are preparing to transfer another detainee to the Southern District of New York, where he will face trial on charges related to the 1998 bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania - bombings that killed over 200 people. Preventing this detainee from coming to our shores would prevent his trial and conviction. And after over a decade, it is time to finally see that justice is served, and that is what we intend to do.

The second category of cases involves detainees who violate the laws of war and are best tried through Military Commissions. Military commissions have a history in the United States dating back to George Washington and the Revolutionary War. They are an appropriate venue for trying detainees for violations of the laws of war. They allow for the protection of sensitive sources and methods of intelligence-gathering; for the safety and security of participants; and for the presentation of evidence gathered from the battlefield that cannot be effectively presented in federal Courts.

Now, some have suggested that this represents a reversal on my part. They are wrong. In 2006, I did strongly oppose legislation proposed by the Bush Administration and passed by the Congress because it failed to establish a legitimate legal framework, with the kind of meaningful due process and rights for the accused that could stand up on appeal. I did, however, support the use of military commissions to try detainees, provided there were several reforms. And those are the reforms that we are making.

Instead of using the flawed Commissions of the last seven years, my Administration is bringing our Commissions in line with the rule of law. The rule will no longer permit us to use as evidence statements that have been obtained using cruel, inhuman, or degrading interrogation methods. We will no longer place the burden to prove that hearsay is unreliable on the opponent of the hearsay. And we will give detainees greater latitude in selecting their own counsel, and more protections if they refuse to testify. These reforms - among others - will make our Military Commissions a more credible and effective means of administering justice, and I will work with Congress and legal authorities across the political spectrum on legislation to ensure that these Commissions are fair, legitimate, and effective.

The third category of detainees includes those who we have been ordered released by the courts. Let me repeat what I said earlier: this has absolutely nothing to do with my decision to close Guantanamo. It has to do with the rule of law. The courts have found that there is no legitimate reason to hold twenty-one of the people currently held at Guantanamo. Twenty of these findings took place before I came into office. The United States is a nation of laws, and we must abide by these rulings.

The fourth category of cases involves detainees who we have determined can be transferred safely to another country. So far, our review team has approved fifty detainees for transfer. And my Administration is in ongoing discussions with a number of other countries about the transfer of detainees to their soil for detention and rehabilitation.

Finally, there remains the question of detainees at Guantanamo who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people.

I want to be honest: this is the toughest issue we will face. We are going to exhaust every avenue that we have to prosecute those at Guantanamo who pose a danger to our country. But even when this process is complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States. Examples of that threat include people who have received extensive explosives training at al Qaeda training camps, commanded Taliban troops in battle, expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans. These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States.

As I said, I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people. Al Qaeda terrorists and their affiliates are at war with the United States, and those that we capture - like other prisoners of war - must be prevented from attacking us again. However, we must recognize that these detention policies cannot be unbounded. That is why my Administration has begun to reshape these standards to ensure they are in line with the rule of law. We must have clear, defensible and lawful standards for those who fall in this category. We must have fair procedures so that we don't make mistakes. We must have a thorough process of periodic review, so that any prolonged detention is carefully evaluated and justified.

I know that creating such a system poses unique challenges. Other countries have grappled with this question, and so must we. But I want to be very clear that our goal is to construct a legitimate legal framework for Guantanamo detainees - not to avoid one. In our constitutional system, prolonged detention should not be the decision of any one man. If and when we determine that the United States must hold individuals to keep them from carrying out an act of war, we will do so within a system that involves judicial and congressional oversight. And so going forward, my Administration will work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime so that our efforts are consistent with our values and our Constitution.

As our efforts to close Guantanamo move forward, I know that the politics in Congress will be difficult. These issues are fodder for 30-second commercials and direct mail pieces that are designed to frighten. I get it. But if we continue to make decisions from within a climate of fear, we will make more mistakes. And if we refuse to deal with these issues today, then I guarantee you that they will be an albatross around our efforts to combat terrorism in the future. I have confidence that the American people are more interested in doing what is right to protect this country than in political posturing. I am not the only person in this city who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution - so did each and every member of Congress. Together we have a responsibility to enlist our values in the effort to secure our people, and to leave behind the legacy that makes it easier for future Presidents to keep this country safe.

The second set of issues that I want to discuss relates to security and transparency.

National security requires a delicate balance. Our democracy depends upon transparency, but some information must be protected from public disclosure for the sake of our security - for instance, the movements of our troops; our intelligence-gathering; or the information we have about a terrorist organization and its affiliates. In these and other cases, lives are at stake.

Several weeks ago, as part of an ongoing court case, I released memos issued by the previous Administration's Office of Legal Counsel. I did not do this because I disagreed with the enhanced interrogation techniques that those memos authorized, or because I reject their legal rationale - although I do on both counts. I released the memos because the existence of that approach to interrogation was already widely known, the Bush Administration had acknowledged its existence, and I had already banned those methods. The argument that somehow by releasing those memos, we are providing terrorists with information about how they will be interrogated is unfounded - we will not be interrogating terrorists using that approach, because that approach is now prohibited.

In short, I released these memos because there was no overriding reason to protect them. And the ensuing debate has helped the American people better understand how these interrogation methods came to be authorized and used.

On the other hand, I recently opposed the release of certain photographs that were taken of detainees by U.S. personnel between 2002 and 2004. Individuals who violated standards of behavior in these photos have been investigated and held accountable. There is no debate as to whether what is reflected in those photos is wrong, and nothing has been concealed to absolve perpetrators of crimes. However, it was my judgment - informed by my national security team - that releasing these photos would inflame anti-American opinion, and allow our enemies to paint U.S. troops with a broad, damning and inaccurate brush, endangering them in theaters of war.

In short, there is a clear and compelling reason to not release these particular photos. There are nearly 200,000 Americans who are serving in harm's way, and I have a solemn responsibility for their safety as Commander-in-Chief. Nothing would be gained by the release of these photos that matters more than the lives of our young men and women serving in harm's way.

In each of these cases, I had to strike the right balance between transparency and national security. This balance brings with it a precious responsibility. And there is no doubt that the American people have seen this balance tested. In the images from Abu Ghraib and the brutal interrogation techniques made public long before I was President, the American people learned of actions taken in their name that bear no resemblance to the ideals that generations of Americans have fought for. And whether it was the run-up to the Iraq War or the revelation of secret programs, Americans often felt like part of the story had been unnecessarily withheld from them. That causes suspicion to build up. That leads to a thirst for accountability.

I ran for President promising transparency, and I meant what I said. That is why, whenever possible, we will make information available to the American people so that they can make informed judgments and hold us accountable. But I have never argued - and never will - that our most sensitive national security matters should be an open book. I will never abandon - and I will vigorously defend - the necessity of classification to defend our troops at war; to protect sources and methods; and to safeguard confidential actions that keep the American people safe. And so, whenever we cannot release certain information to the public for valid national security reasons, I will insist that there is oversight of my actions - by Congress or by the courts.

We are launching a review of current policies by all of those agencies responsible for the classification of documents to determine where reforms are possible, and to assure that the other branches of government will be in a position to review executive branch decisions on these matters. Because in our system of checks and balances, someone must always watch over the watchers - especially when it comes to sensitive information.

Along those same lines, my Administration is also confronting challenges to what is known as the "State Secrets" privilege. This is a doctrine that allows the government to challenge legal cases involving secret programs. It has been used by many past Presidents - Republican and Democrat - for many decades. And while this principle is absolutely necessary to protect national security, I am concerned that it has been over-used. We must not protect information merely because it reveals the violation of a law or embarrasses the government. That is why my Administration is nearing completion of a thorough review of this practice.

We plan to embrace several principles for reform. We will apply a stricter legal test to material that can be protected under the State Secrets privilege. We will not assert the privilege in court without first following a formal process, including review by a Justice Department committee and the personal approval of the Attorney General. Finally, each year we will voluntarily report to Congress when we have invoked the privilege and why, because there must be proper oversight of our actions.

On all of these matter related to the disclosure of sensitive information, I wish I could say that there is a simple formula. But there is not. These are tough calls involving competing concerns, and they require a surgical approach. But the common thread that runs through all of my decisions is simple: we will safeguard what we must to protect the American people, but we will also ensure the accountability and oversight that is the hallmark of our constitutional system. I will never hide the truth because it is uncomfortable. I will deal with Congress and the courts as co-equal branches of government. I will tell the American people what I know and don't know, and when I release something publicly or keep something secret, I will tell you why.

In all of the areas that I have discussed today, the policies that I have proposed represent a new direction from the last eight years. To protect the American people and our values, we have banned enhanced interrogation techniques. We are closing the prison at Guantanamo. We are reforming Military Commissions, and we will pursue a new legal regime to detain terrorists. We are declassifying more information and embracing more oversight of our actions, and narrowing our use of the State Secrets privilege. These are dramatic changes that will put our approach to national security on a surer, safer and more sustainable footing, and their implementation will take time.

There is a core principle that we will apply to all of our actions: even as we clean up the mess at Guantanamo, we will constantly re-evaluate our approach, subject our decisions to review from the other branches of government, and seek the strongest and most sustainable legal framework for addressing these issues in the long-term. By doing that, we can leave behind a legacy that outlasts my Administration, and that endures for the next President and the President after that; a legacy that protects the American people, and enjoys broad legitimacy at home and abroad.

That is what I mean when I say that we need to focus on the future. I recognize that many still have a strong desire to focus on the past. When it comes to the actions of the last eight years, some Americans are angry; others want to re-fight debates that have been settled, most clearly at the ballot box in November. And I know that these debates lead directly to a call for a fuller accounting, perhaps through an Independent Commission.

I have opposed the creation of such a Commission because I believe that our existing democratic institutions are strong enough to deliver accountability. The Congress can review abuses of our values, and there are ongoing inquiries by the Congress into matters like enhanced interrogation techniques. The Department of Justice and our courts can work through and punish any violations of our laws.

I understand that it is no secret that there is a tendency in Washington to spend our time pointing fingers at one another. And our media culture feeds the impulses that lead to a good fight. Nothing will contribute more to that than an extended re-litigation of the last eight years. Already, we have seen how that kind of effort only leads those in Washington to different sides laying blame, and can distract us from focusing our time, our effort, and our politics on the challenges of the future.

We see that, above all, in how the recent debate has been obscured by two opposite and absolutist ends. On one side of the spectrum, there are those who make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism, and who would almost never put national security over transparency. On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who embrace a view that can be summarized in two words: "anything goes." Their arguments suggest that the ends of fighting terrorism can be used to justify any means, and that the President should have blanket authority to do whatever he wants - provided that it is a President with whom they agree.

Both sides may be sincere in their views, but neither side is right. The American people are not absolutist, and they don't elect us to impose a rigid ideology on our problems. They know that we need not sacrifice our security for our values, nor sacrifice our values for our security, so long as we approach difficult questions with honesty, and care, and a dose of common sense. That, after all, is the unique genius of America. That is the challenge laid down by our Constitution. That has been the source of our strength through the ages. That is what makes the United States of America different as a nation.

I can stand here today, as President of the United States, and say without exception or equivocation that we do not torture, and that we will vigorously protect our people while forging a strong and durable framework that allows us to fight terrorism while abiding by the rule of law. Make no mistake: if we fail to turn the page on the approach that was taken over the past several years, then I will not be able to say that as President. And if we cannot stand for those core values, then we are not keeping faith with the documents that are enshrined in this hall.

The Framers who drafted the Constitution could not have foreseen the challenges that have unfolded over the last two hundred and twenty two years. But our Constitution has endured through secession and civil rights - through World War and Cold War - because it provides a foundation of principles that can be applied pragmatically; it provides a compass that can help us find our way. It hasn't always been easy. We are an imperfect people. Every now and then, there are those who think that America's safety and success requires us to walk away from the sacred principles enshrined in this building. We hear such voices today. But the American people have resisted that temptation. And though we have made our share of mistakes and course corrections, we have held fast to the principles that have been the source of our strength, and a beacon to the world.

Now, this generation faces a great test in the specter of terrorism. Unlike the Civil War or World War II, we cannot count on a surrender ceremony to bring this journey to an end. Right now, in distant training camps and in crowded cities, there are people plotting to take American lives. That will be the case a year from now, five years from now, and - in all probability - ten years from now. Neither I nor anyone else can standing here today can say that there will not be another terrorist attack that takes American lives. But I can say with certainty that my Administration - along with our extraordinary troops and the patriotic men and women who defend our national security - will do everything in our power to keep the American people safe. And I do know with certainty that we can defeat al Qaeda. Because the terrorists can only succeed if they swell their ranks and alienate America from our allies, and they will never be able to do that if we stay true to who we are; if we forge tough and durable approaches to fighting terrorism that are anchored in our timeless ideals.

This must be our common purpose. I ran for President because I believe that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together. We will not be safe if we see national security as a wedge that divides America - it can and must be a cause that unites us as one people, as one nation. We have done so before in times that were more perilous than ours. We will do so once again. Thank you, God Bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

Remarks of former vice president Richard B. Cheney to the American Enterprise Institute on May 21, 2009, as prepared for delivery.

Thank you all very much, and Arthur, thank you for that introduction. It's good to be back at AEI, where we have many friends. Lynne is one of your longtime scholars, and I'm looking forward to spending more time here myself as a returning trustee. What happened was, they were looking for a new member of the board of trustees, and they asked me to head up the search committee.

I first came to AEI after serving at the Pentagon, and departed only after a very interesting job offer came along. I had no expectation of returning to public life, but my career worked out a little differently. Those eight years as vice president were quite a journey, and during a time of big events and great decisions, I don't think I missed much.

Being the first vice president who had also served as secretary of defense, naturally my duties tended toward national security. I focused on those challenges day to day, mostly free from the usual political distractions. I had the advantage of being a vice president content with the responsibilities I had, and going about my work with no higher ambition. Today, I'm an even freer man. Your kind invitation brings me here as a private citizen--a career in politics behind me, no elections to win or lose, and no favor to seek.

The responsibilities we carried belong to others now. And though I'm not here to speak for George W. Bush, I am certain that no one wishes the current administration more success in defending the country than we do. We understand the complexities of national security decisions. We understand the pressures that confront a president and his advisers. Above all, we know what is at stake. And though administrations and policies have changed, the stakes for America have not changed.

Right now there is considerable debate in this city about the measures our administration took to defend the American people. Today I want to set forth the strategic thinking behind our policies. I do so as one who was there every day of the Bush administration who supported the policies when they were made, and without hesitation would do so again in the same circumstances.

When President Obama makes wise decisions, as I believe he has done in some respects on Afghanistan, and in reversing his plan to release incendiary photos, he deserves our support. And when he faults or mischaracterizes the national security decisions we made in the Bush years, he deserves an answer. The point is not to look backward. Now and for years to come, a lot rides on our President's understanding of the security policies that preceded him. And whatever choices he makes concerning the defense of this country, those choices should not be based on slogans and campaign rhetoric, but on a truthful telling of history.

Our administration always faced its share of criticism, and from some quarters it was always intense. That was especially so in the later years of our term, when the dangers were as serious as ever, but the sense of general alarm after September 11, 2001 was a fading memory. Part of our responsibility, as we saw it, was not to forget the terrible harm that had been done to America . . . and not to let 9/11 become the prelude to something much bigger and far worse.

That attack itself was, of course, the most devastating strike in a series of terrorist plots carried out against Americans at home and abroad. In 1993, terrorists bombed the World Trade Center, hoping to bring down the towers with a blast from below. The attacks continued in 1995, with the bombing of U.S. facilities in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; the killing of servicemen at Khobar Towers in 1996; the attack on our embassies in East Africa in 1998; the murder of American sailors on the USS Cole in 2000; and then the hijackings of 9/11, and all the grief and loss we suffered on that day.

9/11 caused everyone to take a serious second look at threats that had been gathering for a while, and enemies whose plans were getting bolder and more sophisticated. Throughout the 90s, America had responded to these attacks, if at all, on an ad hoc basis. The first attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a law enforcement problem, with everything handled after the fact--crime scene, arrests, indictments, convictions, prison sentences, case closed.

That's how it seemed from a law enforcement perspective, at least--but for the terrorists the case was not closed. For them, it was another offensive strike in their ongoing war against the United States. And it turned their minds to even harder strikes with higher casualties. Nine-eleven made necessary a shift of policy, aimed at a clear strategic threat--what the Congress called "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States." From that moment forward, instead of merely preparing to round up the suspects and count up the victims after the next attack, we were determined to prevent attacks in the first place.

We could count on almost universal support back then, because everyone understood the environment we were in. We'd just been hit by a foreign enemy--leaving 3,000 Americans dead, more than we lost at Pearl Harbor. In Manhattan, we were staring at 16 acres of ashes. The Pentagon took a direct hit, and the Capitol or the White House were spared only by the Americans on Flight 93, who died bravely and defiantly.

Everyone expected a follow-on attack, and our job was to stop it. We didn't know what was coming next, but everything we did know in that autumn of 2001 looked bad. This was the world in which al-Qaeda was seeking nuclear technology, and A. Q. Khan was selling nuclear technology on the black market. We had the anthrax attack from an unknown source. We had the training camps of Afghanistan, and dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists.

These are just a few of the problems we had on our hands. And foremost on our minds was the prospect of the very worst coming to pass--a 9/11 with nuclear weapons.

For me, one of the defining experiences was the morning of 9/11 itself. As you might recall, I was in my office in that first hour, when radar caught sight of an airliner heading toward the White House at 500 miles an hour. That was Flight 77, the one that ended up hitting the Pentagon. With the plane still inbound, Secret Service agents came into my office and said we had to leave, now. A few moments later I found myself in a fortified White House command post somewhere down below.

There in the bunker came the reports and images that so many Americans remember from that day--word of the crash in Pennsylvania, the final phone calls from hijacked planes, the final horror for those who jumped to their death to escape burning alive. In the years since, I've heard occasional speculation that I'm a different man after 9/11. I wouldn't say that. But I'll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities.

To make certain our nation country never again faced such a day of horror, we developed a comprehensive strategy, beginning with far greater homeland security to make the United States a harder target. But since wars cannot be won on the defensive, we moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks. We decided, as well, to confront the regimes that sponsored terrorists, and to go after those who provide sanctuary, funding, and weapons to enemies of the United States. We turned special attention to regimes that had the capacity to build weapons of mass destruction, and might transfer such weapons to terrorists.

We did all of these things, and with bipartisan support put all these policies in place. It has resulted in serious blows against enemy operations: the take-down of the A.Q. Khan network and the dismantling of Libya's nuclear program. It's required the commitment of many thousands of troops in two theaters of war, with high points and some low points in both Iraq and Afghanistan--and at every turn, the people of our military carried the heaviest burden. Well over seven years into the effort, one thing we know is that the enemy has spent most of this time on the defensive--and every attempt to strike inside the United States has failed.

So we're left to draw one of two conclusions--and here is the great dividing line in our current debate over national security. You can look at the facts and conclude that the comprehensive strategy has worked, and therefore needs to be continued as vigilantly as ever. Or you can look at the same set of facts and conclude that 9/11 was a one-off event--coordinated, devastating, but also unique and not sufficient to justify a sustained wartime effort. Whichever conclusion you arrive at, it will shape your entire view of the last seven years, and of the policies necessary to protect America for years to come.

The key to any strategy is accurate intelligence, and skilled professionals to get that information in time to use it. In seeking to guard this nation against the threat of catastrophic violence, our Administration gave intelligence officers the tools and lawful authority they needed to gain vital information. We didn't invent that authority. It is drawn from Article Two of the Constitution. And it was given specificity by the Congress after 9/11, in a Joint Resolution authorizing "all necessary and appropriate force" to protect the American people.

Our government prevented attacks and saved lives through the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which let us intercept calls and track contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and persons inside the United States. The program was top secret, and for good reason, until the editors of the New York Times got it and put it on the front page. After 9/11, the Times had spent months publishing the pictures and the stories of everyone killed by al-Qaeda on 9/11. Now here was that same newspaper publishing secrets in a way that could only help al-Qaeda. It impressed the Pulitzer committee, but it damn sure didn't serve the interests of our country, or the safety of our people.

In the years after 9/11, our government also understood that the safety of the country required collecting information known only to the worst of the terrorists. And in a few cases, that information could be gained only through tough interrogations.

In top secret meetings about enhanced interrogations, I made my own beliefs clear. I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program. The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do. The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people.

By presidential decision, last month we saw the selective release of documents relating to enhanced interrogations. This is held up as a bold exercise in open government, honoring the public's right to know. We're informed, as well, that there was much agonizing over this decision.

Yet somehow, when the soul-searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the public was given less than half the truth. The released memos were carefully redacted to leave out references to what our government learned through the methods in question. Other memos, laying out specific terrorist plots that were averted, apparently were not even considered for release. For reasons the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has a right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers.

Over on the left wing of the president's party, there appears to be little curiosity in finding out what was learned from the terrorists. The kind of answers they're after would be heard before a so-called "Truth Commission." Some are even demanding that those who recommended and approved the interrogations be prosecuted, in effect treating political disagreements as a punishable offense, and political opponents as criminals. It's hard to imagine a worse precedent, filled with more possibilities for trouble and abuse, than to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessors.

Apart from doing a serious injustice to intelligence operators and lawyers who deserve far better for their devoted service, the danger here is a loss of focus on national security, and what it requires. I would advise the administration to think very carefully about the course ahead. All the zeal that has been directed at interrogations is utterly misplaced. And staying on that path will only lead our government further away from its duty to protect the American people.

One person who by all accounts objected to the release of the interrogation memos was the Director of Central Intelligence, Leon Panetta. He was joined in that view by at least four of his predecessors. I assume they felt this way because they understand the importance of protecting intelligence sources, methods, and personnel. But now that this once top-secret information is out for all to see--including the enemy--let me draw your attention to some points that are routinely overlooked.

It is a fact that only detainees of the highest intelligence value were ever subjected to enhanced interrogation. You've heard endlessly about waterboarding. It happened to three terrorists. One of them was Khalid Sheikh Muhammed--the mastermind of 9/11, who has also boasted about beheading Daniel Pearl.

We had a lot of blind spots after the attacks on our country. We didn't know about al-Qaeda's plans, but Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and a few others did know. And with many thousands of innocent lives potentially in the balance, we didn't think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all.

Maybe you've heard that when we captured KSM, he said he would talk as soon as he got to New York City and saw his lawyer. But like many critics of interrogations, he clearly misunderstood the business at hand. American personnel were not there to commence an elaborate legal proceeding, but to extract information from him before al-Qaeda could strike again and kill more of our people.

In public discussion of these matters, there has been a strange and sometimes willful attempt to conflate what happened at Abu Ghraib prison with the top secret program of enhanced interrogations. At Abu Ghraib, a few sadistic prison guards abused inmates in violation of American law, military regulations, and simple decency. For the harm they did, to Iraqi prisoners and to America's cause, they deserved and received Army justice. And it takes a deeply unfair cast of mind to equate the disgraces of Abu Ghraib with the lawful, skillful, and entirely honorable work of CIA personnel trained to deal with a few malevolent men.

Even before the interrogation program began, and throughout its operation, it was closely reviewed to ensure that every method used was in full compliance with the Constitution, statutes, and treaty obligations. On numerous occasions, leading members of Congress, including the current speaker of the House, were briefed on the program and on the methods.

Yet for all these exacting efforts to do a hard and necessary job and to do it right, we hear from some quarters nothing but feigned outrage based on a false narrative. In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists.

I might add that people who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about "values." Intelligence officers of the United States were not trying to rough up some terrorists simply to avenge the dead of 9/11. We know the difference in this country between justice and vengeance. Intelligence officers were not trying to get terrorists to confess to past killings; they were trying to prevent future killings. From the beginning of the program, there was only one focused and all-important purpose. We sought, and we in fact obtained, specific information on terrorist plans.

Those are the basic facts on enhanced interrogations. And to call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims. What's more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation methods in the future is unwise in the extreme. It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness, and would make the American people less safe.

The administration seems to pride itself on searching for some kind of middle ground in policies addressing terrorism. They may take comfort in hearing disagreement from opposite ends of the spectrum. If liberals are unhappy about some decisions, and conservatives are unhappy about other decisions, then it may seem to them that the President is on the path of sensible compromise. But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed. You cannot keep just some nuclear-armed terrorists out of the United States, you must keep every nuclear-armed terrorist out of the United States. Triangulation is a political strategy, not a national security strategy. When just a single clue that goes unlearned, one lead that goes unpursued, can bring on catastrophe--it's no time for splitting differences. There is never a good time to compromise when the lives and safety of the American people are in the balance.

Behind the overwrought reaction to enhanced interrogations is a broader misconception about the threats that still face our country. You can sense the problem in the emergence of euphemisms that strive to put an imaginary distance between the American people and the terrorist enemy. Apparently using the term "war" where terrorists are concerned is starting to feel a bit dated. So henceforth we're advised by the administration to think of the fight against terrorists as, quote, "Overseas contingency operations." In the event of another terrorist attack on America, the Homeland Security Department assures us it will be ready for this, quote, "man-made disaster"--never mind that the whole Department was created for the purpose of protecting Americans from terrorist attack.

And when you hear that there are no more, quote, "enemy combatants," as there were back in the days of that scary war on terror, at first that sounds like progress. The only problem is that the phrase is gone, but the same assortment of killers and would-be mass murderers are still there. And finding some less judgmental or more pleasant-sounding name for terrorists doesn't change what they are--or what they would do if we let them loose.

On his second day in office, President Obama announced that he was closing the detention facility at Guantanamo. This step came with little deliberation and no plan. Now the President says some of these terrorists should be brought to American soil for trial in our court system. Others, he says, will be shipped to third countries. But so far, the United States has had little luck getting other countries to take hardened terrorists. So what happens then? Attorney General Holder and others have admitted that the United States will be compelled to accept a number of the terrorists here, in the homeland, and it has even been suggested US taxpayer dollars will be used to support them. On this one, I find myself in complete agreement with many in the President's own party. Unsure how to explain to their constituents why terrorists might soon be relocating into their states, these Democrats chose instead to strip funding for such a move out of the most recent war supplemental.

The administration has found that it's easy to receive applause in Europe for closing Guantanamo. But it's tricky to come up with an alternative that will serve the interests of justice and America's national security. Keep in mind that these are hardened terrorists picked up overseas since 9/11. The ones that were considered low-risk were released a long time ago. And among these, we learned yesterday, many were treated too leniently, because 1 in 7 cut a straight path back to their prior line of work and have conducted murderous attacks in the Middle East. I think the President will find, upon reflection, that to bring the worst of the worst terrorists inside the United States would be cause for great danger and regret in the years to come.

In the category of euphemism, the prizewinning entry would be a recent editorial in a familiar newspaper that referred to terrorists we've captured as, quote, "abducted." Here we have ruthless enemies of this country, stopped in their tracks by brave operatives in the service of America, and a major editorial page makes them sound like they were kidnap victims, picked up at random on their way to the movies.

It's one thing to adopt the euphemisms that suggest we're no longer engaged in a war. These are just words, and in the end it's the policies that matter most. You don't want to call them enemy combatants? Fine. Call them what you want--just don't bring them into the United States. Tired of calling it a war? Use any term you prefer. Just remember it is a serious step to begin unraveling some of the very policies that have kept our people safe since 9/11.

Another term out there that slipped into the discussion is the notion that American interrogation practices were a "recruitment tool" for the enemy. On this theory, by the tough questioning of killers, we have supposedly fallen short of our own values. This recruitment-tool theory has become something of a mantra lately, including from the President himself. And after a familiar fashion, it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. It's another version of that same old refrain from the Left, "We brought it on ourselves."

It is much closer to the truth that terrorists hate this country precisely because of the values we profess and seek to live by, not by some alleged failure to do so. Nor are terrorists or those who see them as victims exactly the best judges of America's moral standards, one way or the other.

Critics of our policies are given to lecturing on the theme of being consistent with American values. But no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants ever to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things. And when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.

As a practical matter, too, terrorists may lack much, but they have never lacked for grievances against the United States. Our belief in freedom of speech and religion, our belief in equal rights for women, our support for Israel, our cultural and political influence in the world--these are the true sources of resentment, all mixed in with the lies and conspiracy theories of the radical clerics. These recruitment tools were in vigorous use throughout the 1990s, and they were sufficient to motivate the nineteen recruits who boarded those planes on September 11, 2001.

The United States of America was a good country before 9/11, just as we are today. List all the things that make us a force for good in the world--for liberty, for human rights, for the rational, peaceful resolution of differences--and what you end up with is a list of the reasons why the terrorists hate America. If fine speech-making, appeals to reason, or pleas for compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago have abandoned the field. And when they see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don't stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along. Instead the terrorists see just what they were hoping for--our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity.

What is equally certain is this: The broad-based strategy set in motion by President Bush obviously had nothing to do with causing the events of 9/11. But the serious way we dealt with terrorists from then on, and all the intelligence we gathered in that time, had everything to do with preventing another 9/11 on our watch. The enhanced interrogations of high-value detainees and the terrorist surveillance program have without question made our country safer. Every senior official who has been briefed on these classified matters knows of specific attacks that were in the planning stages and were stopped by the programs we put in place.

This might explain why President Obama has reserved unto himself the right to order the use of enhanced interrogation should he deem it appropriate. What value remains to that authority is debatable, given that the enemy now knows exactly what interrogation methods to train against, and which ones not to worry about. Yet having reserved for himself the authority to order enhanced interrogation after an emergency, you would think that President Obama would be less disdainful of what his predecessor authorized after 9/11. It's almost gone unnoticed that the president has retained the power to order the same methods in the same circumstances. When they talk about interrogations, he and his administration speak as if they have resolved some great moral dilemma in how to extract critical information from terrorists. Instead they have put the decision off, while assigning a presumption of moral superiority to any decision they make in the future.

Releasing the interrogation memos was flatly contrary to the national security interest of the United States. The harm done only begins with top secret information now in the hands of the terrorists, who have just received a lengthy insert for their training manual. Across the world, governments that have helped us capture terrorists will fear that sensitive joint operations will be compromised. And at the CIA, operatives are left to wonder if they can depend on the White House or Congress to back them up when the going gets tough. Why should any agency employee take on a difficult assignment when, even though they act lawfully and in good faith, years down the road the press and Congress will treat everything they do with suspicion, outright hostility, and second-guessing? Some members of Congress are notorious for demanding they be briefed into the most sensitive intelligence programs. They support them in private, and then head for the hills at the first sign of controversy.

As far as the interrogations are concerned, all that remains an official secret is the information we gained as a result. Some of his defenders say the unseen memos are inconclusive, which only raises the question why they won't let the American people decide that for themselves. I saw that information as vice president, and I reviewed some of it again at the National Archives last month. I've formally asked that it be declassified so the American people can see the intelligence we obtained, the things we learned, and the consequences for national security. And as you may have heard, last week that request was formally rejected. It's worth recalling that ultimate power of declassification belongs to the President himself. President Obama has used his declassification power to reveal what happened in the interrogation of terrorists. Now let him use that same power to show Americans what did not happen, thanks to the good work of our intelligence officials.

I believe this information will confirm the value of interrogations--and I am not alone. President Obama's own Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Blair, has put it this way: "High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al-Qaeda organization that was attacking this country." End quote. Admiral Blair put that conclusion in writing, only to see it mysteriously deleted in a later version released by the administration--the missing twenty-six words that tell an inconvenient truth. But they couldn't change the words of George Tenet, the CIA Director under Presidents Clinton and Bush, who bluntly said: "I know that this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."

If Americans do get the chance to learn what our country was spared, it'll do more than clarify the urgency and the rightness of enhanced interrogations in the years after 9/11. It may help us to stay focused on dangers that have not gone away. Instead of idly debating which political opponents to prosecute and punish, our attention will return to where it belongs--on the continuing threat of terrorist violence, and on stopping the men who are planning it.

For all the partisan anger that still lingers, our administration will stand up well in history--not despite our actions after 9/11, but because of them. And when I think about all that was to come during our administration and afterward--the recriminations, the second-guessing, the charges of "hubris"--my mind always goes back to that moment.

To put things in perspective, suppose that on the evening of 9/11, President Bush and I had promised that for as long as we held office--which was to be another 2,689 days--there would never be another terrorist attack inside this country. Talk about hubris--it would have seemed a rash and irresponsible thing to say. People would have doubted that we even understood the enormity of what had just happened. Everyone had a very bad feeling about all of this, and felt certain that the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and Shanksville were only the beginning of the violence.

Of course, we made no such promise. Instead, we promised an all-out effort to protect this country. We said we would marshal all elements of our nation's power to fight this war and to win it. We said we would never forget what had happened on 9/11, even if the day came when many others did forget. We spoke of a war that would "include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success." We followed through on all of this, and we stayed true to our word.

To the very end of our administration, we kept al-Qaeda terrorists busy with other problems. We focused on getting their secrets, instead of sharing ours with them. And on our watch, they never hit this country again. After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, seven and a half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, much less criminalized. It is a record to be continued until the danger has passed.

Along the way there were some hard calls. No decision of national security was ever made lightly, and certainly never made in haste. As in all warfare, there have been costs--none higher than the sacrifices of those killed and wounded in our country's service. And even the most decisive victories can never take away the sorrow of losing so many of our own--all those innocent victims of 9/11, and the heroic souls who died trying to save them.

For all that we've lost in this conflict, the United States has never lost its moral bearings. And when the moral reckoning turns to the men known as high-value terrorists, I can assure you they were neither innocent nor victims. As for those who asked them questions and got answers: they did the right thing, they made our country safer, and a lot of Americans are alive today because of them.

Like so many others who serve America, they are not the kind to insist on a thank-you. But I will always be grateful to each one of them, and proud to have served with them for a time in the same cause. They, and so many others, have given honorable service to our country through all the difficulties and all the dangers. I will always admire them and wish them well. And I am confident that this nation will never take their work, their dedication, or their achievements, for granted.

I must admit to having some mixed feelings about Michael Steele—mostly positive, but he seemed weak at times. Here, his most recent speech, is a knock out:

Once again, welcome to Maryland. Welcome to Prince George's County, Maryland. This is my birthplace, the place where I raised my family and the place of my first leadership position in the Republican Party. It was a tough job - and the pay wasn't very good. Most of my time was spent walking neighborhoods, licking envelopes, and making phone calls for the County Republican Party.

You don't know lonely until you announce: "Hi, I'm from the Prince George's County Republican Party." But, I learned a great deal; and it served as a foundation on my journey to becoming County Chairman, State Chairman and the first African American elected statewide. You are in the place where this incredible journey began; a place that is very special to me.

Many of you may know this story, so forgive me for re-telling it, but it speaks to who I am and why I am particularly honored that you have chosen me to serve as your chairman.

I was born about 20 minutes from here at Andrews Air Force Base and raised in our nation's capital. I was adopted by my mother and father, a father who suffered from his addictions and his temper and who died when I was 4 years old.

So, my mother Maebell raised me on the salary of laundry worker, having earned no more than $3.83/hour on the day she retired. But, she had managed by her perseverance and the help of her new husband, John, to send me to parochial school, John Carroll High School, and the Johns Hopkins University. I would go on to attend Georgetown University Law School while my sister Monica would become the doctor in the family. So, I think I know something about confronting the odds.

In 2002, I was approached by then-Congressman Bob Ehrlich to run with him as his Lt. Governor. It was an uphill battle. No Republican had won the governorship of Maryland since Spiro Agnew. More importantly, we ran against Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and Uncle Teddy's little niece. We ran an unconventional campaign that wooed a number of Democrats to our side. We built coalitions and met with a diverse community of civic, religious and political leaders in their neighborhoods and places of worship. On election night when the votes were counted, we made history becoming the first winning Republican ticket in 40 years and beating back the status quo thinking that it could not be done. So, I know little something about winning against the odds. I wanted to begin with that reflection to create the context for what comes next: Lessons learned; lessons that have shaped me as your chairman and that will shape us as a party.

We are at a crucial juncture for our party, and more importantly for our country. Simply put, America needs us now more than ever before. It's time to rise to the occasion. It's time to make our voices heard. It's time to serve our country as the loyal opposition.

We all realize that the Democrats want us to be silent. They want to diminish our voice, and they even want to try to suggest that by being the loyal opposition we are in some way being less than patriotic. You've heard the suggestion that if we oppose the president's policies we are in some crazy way rooting against American success.

But we also know nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is, we would be abandoning our responsibility if we were to be silent while they spend our country into the abyss, while they borrow money we don't have, and while they usher in the most massive expansion of federal government control in the history of our Republic.

Well, I've got news for them. We aren't going to be silent. We are going to speak up, and we are going to show that we have the courage of our convictions. We will not be afraid to agree with the president when we believe he is doing what is best for America, but neither will we be afraid to disagree with the president when we believe his actions are hurting our country.

So, today I'm going to talk to you about some very important turning points for our party. The first turning point is this: Today we are declaring an end to the era of Republicans looking backward. We have just endured two successive elections where we were soundly defeated. As a result, many of us, me included, have done some soul searching. We have looked closely at the places we went wrong, we have talked openly and publicly about our mistakes and our deficiencies. If you don't learn from the past, you are of course destined to repeat it. This has been a difficult, yet healthy and necessary task for our party.

People are sick of politicians and political parties who never own up to their mistakes. We have done so. We lost our way on spending and we owned up to that. We came to Washington to change it and in some ways we let Washington change us, and we owned up to that. We've taken some important steps to recover our values and our senses, and we can say we see the world with a clearer head and a sharper vision.

The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over. It is done. The time for trying to fix or focus on the past has ended. The era of Republican navel gazing is over. We have turned the corner on regret, recrimination, self-pity and self-doubt. Now is the hour to focus all of our energies on winning the future.

The Republican Party is again going to emerge as the party of new ideas. It will take some time, for sure, but it is beginning now. Our governors are emerging with fresh answers to old problems. Some of our brightest stars in Congress are emerging with new approaches. New groups and new entities are being formed. Republicans are rising once again with the energy, the focus, and the determination to turn our timeless principles into new solutions for the future. The introspection is now over. The corner has been turned.

The second turning point for our party is this: We are going to take the president head-on. The honeymoon is over. The two-party system is making a comeback, and that comeback starts today.

The Democrats are in power. They wanted it and now we are going to make them own the results of their arrogance of power: Policies that are hurting the long-term health of our country. We are going to give voice to the growing chorus of Americans who realize that there is a difference between creating wealth and redistributing wealth. And we are not going to be shy about it. Simply put, we are going to speak truth to power.

There has been a great deal of talk in Republican circles about how we should deal with President Obama and the entire Obama phenomenon. Many have suggested that we need to be careful, that we need to tip-toe around President Obama, that we have to be careful not to take him on, at least not directly. This has led to some handwringing among Republicans; and quite frankly some missed opportunities. We've seen strategists writing memos and doing briefings urging that Republicans avoid confronting the President. Steer clear of any frontal assaults on his Administration, they warn. They suggest that instead we should go after Nancy Pelosi, whom nobody likes. Or Harry Reid, whom nobody knows. Or this Tim Geithner fellow, whom nobody believes. Or maybe even Barney Frank, whom nobody understands.

You know the thinking. In the same way that the Democrats target conservative talk show hosts and former vice presidents, we should also engage in some misdirection, just like they do.

The argument goes that we should be careful here, because the polls suggest that President Obama is popular.

Well, the president is personally popular. Pity the fool who paid for a poll to figure that out. Folks like him. He's got an easy demeanor. He's a great orator. His campaign was based on change and hope. He's young. He's cool. He's hip. He's got a good looking family. What's not to like? He's got all the qualities America likes in a celebrity, so, of course he is popular.

There's only one problem. He's taking us in the wrong direction and bankrupting our country. Were it not for that little detail, I'd be a big fan too.

This popular politician who is our president is engaged in the most massive expansion of the old industrial age model of government that our country has ever seen. This popular politician is spending America into debt of such mammoth proportions that none of us can even begin to calculate it or really understand it. The numbers are so big that they seem impossible.

If we have the courage of our convictions, and we do, then we will and we must stand against these disastrous policies, regardless of the president's personal popularity. This is not a game, this is not a popularity contest, and this is not American Idol. This is the future of our country that is at stake.

The guy who campaigned in favor of bottom-up style of governing is presiding over the most massive top down expansion of government bureaucracy and spending our country has ever seen or even contemplated.

Candidate Obama was very moderate in his views, but President Obama could not possibly be further to the far left. Candidate Obama talked about fiscal responsibility, about government living within its means. But President Obama is saddling our unborn grandchildren with mountains of debt. Candidate Obama boasted about cutting taxes, but President Obama will have to raise taxes to pay for his massive top-down government explosion. Candidate Obama was all about being bipartisan, but President Obama could not be more partisan, yielding his legislative agenda almost entirely to radicals like Nancy Pelosi.

So...what's the loyal opposition to do with this popular president? We are going to speak truth to power. We are going to speak directly, and we are going to take him on.

This is not about personalities. This is about the very sizeable gap emerging between America's opinion of President Obama the man, and America's opinion of President Obama's policies. In fact, it's not a gap, it's a chasm. In the end we are all about ideals, principles, policies, and ideas. We have only one goal, and it's not power. It's not majorities. It's success for America.

The honeymoon is over. We are going to challenge those policies that we believe are wrong, and we are going to do so without apology and without a second thought. But there is a very important distinction I want to make here. We are going to take this president on with class. We are going to take this president on with dignity. This will be a very sharp and marked contrast to the shabby and classless way that the Democrats and the far left spoke of President Bush.

We've just seen a bunch of news stories on President Obama's first 100 days in office. Predictably, most in the media were fawning all over the president. But I wouldn't break ground on the Mall for his monument just yet, as his policies are increasingly unpopular with the American people.

The American people aren't worried about polls. The American people are worried about jobs, foreclosures, bailouts, taxes, spending, and debt. While the Obama Administration is giving the banks a stress test, they are also giving the American people a tremendous amount of stress.

Let's look at the first 100 days of President Obama's "reign of error" in a factual manner, not in terms of his speeches, but in terms of his actions: Under President Obama the federal government is now in the banking business. Under President Obama the government now makes cars. Under President Obama our country has amassed debts that will take generations to repay. Under President Obama America is increasingly in debt to foreign countries, from China to the Middle East.

President Obama now wants to cap and tax every single American into paying higher utility rates. President Obama and his allies in Congress have now put their taxing eyes on soft drinks. President Obama and Democrat leaders want a brand new tax on our health care benefits and are devising a plan to give federal government bureaucrats control of our health care system. President Obama is backing a plan to take away the basic right of every American worker to cast a private ballot.

President Obama has for the first time in our history politicized the US Census process by putting political appointees in his White House in charge of it and wanting a corrupt, fraudulent organization to run it. President Obama and his far left allies are flirting with an attempt to squelch the basic freedom of speech of our nation's airwaves. President Obama's Attorney General is trying to use Mexican drug gang wars as a reason to advocate a new gun ban in America.

President Obama's Administration has disparaged our war heroes and veterans by suggesting that they are a threat to our safety, when the truth is they are the cause of our safety. The president, who thinks that every student should be able to go to college, is cutting much needed funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The president, who pledged that he would create millions of jobs through federal public works projects, now requires project labor agreements on such projects which effectively denies small and minority owned businesses access to those jobs because they are not unionized.

And the one the galls me the most: While the president sends his kids to a private school, he is at the very same time taking away opportunity scholarships from poor Hispanic and African-American kids right here in our nation's capital. Those are the facts of the president's first 100 days.

The last Democrat President declared that the era of big government was over. Can some please send President Obama a copy of that memo! Because this new Democrat President has ushered in a new era of left wing, old school, top down, Industrial Age, bureaucratic Big Government the likes of which our country has never seen. It is all designed for short-term political pay-off, with potentially catastrophic long-term effects on our nation's economic prosperity. Our nation's unemployment rate has climbed to a 25 year high. The gross domestic product, the best indicator of our economic health, was down 6.1 percent in the last quarter.

Two and half million Americans have lost their jobs this year alone. Just last month, when 530,000 Americans lost their jobs, this Administration tried to spin this as progress. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and President Obama are planning an America where there are more people moving down the ladder of opportunity than moving up the ladder of opportunity. They are planning for an America that is more dependent, less industrious and less ambitious than our nation's ideals. That is not the kind of America Republicans envision. As the next 100 days unfold, the president and the Democrat Party would be wise to remember these timeless truths:

"You cannot build character and courage by taking away one's initiative and incentive."

"You cannot help individuals permanently by doing for them what they should do for themselves."

The third turning point is this: The Republican comeback has begun. It is underway, and it is not in Washington.

I may not know much, but I do know that our comeback is well underway in states all across America.

I've had the opportunity to meet with all of you in five regional roundtables in each part of the country. We did those meetings behind the scenes, out of the public eye. That gave us a great opportunity to speak candidly with each other, a chance to review our strategies and tactics, a chance to learn from each other, and a chance to be very direct with each other.

I've also had the honor of speaking in 23 different states in the past 100 days. From Oregon to Idaho, from Wisconsin to Indiana, from Florida to Georgia, the energy among the grassroots is strong.

Too bad the chattering classes inside the Beltway are too busy fretting over phony disputes and intra-party intrigue to notice that a change has indeed come to America. But it's not the one the Obama Administration wants aired on the nightly news.

Those of you who live outside of Washington know what I'm talking about. Those of you who actually attend Lincoln Day dinners, and county party events, those of you who toil in the vineyards, spending time in communities, in diners, in barber shops, and in coffee shops where real, every day people can be found. You know it is real. You can see it and feel it.

Our comeback will not begin in Washington. Our conversation with America will not focus on Washington. Our Republican National Committee will no longer rely on Washington. We will look to the rest of America instead.

Finally, let me conclude today by talking for a minute about where the Republican Party is headed.

For me the Republican Party owes its moorings to Edmund Burke, William F. Buckley, and Ronald Reagan. Those are the people that I trace my roots to in the Republican cause.

For each of them conservatism must always respect reality, effectively assess the times, and become relevant to them. Thus is our charge.

Ronald Reagan always insisted that our party must move aggressively to seize the moment. He insisted that our party recognize the truth of the times and establish our first principles in both word and deed.

As conservatives, we must stop acting like we don't really believe in our principles. Too often, we act as if we are scared to apply our timeless principles to today's problems and challenges.

Our path and our challenge are to apply our principles not to the past, but to the future.

In this hour conservatives stand just a bit stronger, just a bit wiser, ready once again to think and act with a freshness and a boldness that is uncompromising. For conservatism to take root in the next generation we must offer genuine solutions that are relevant to this age. A Republican Renaissance has begun!

We will conquer the challenges not of the last century, but the challenges of our time. Our success will not be found in dusting off old campaign manuals from the 70's and 80's. Our success will be found in speaking directly to the American people about a rebirth of the American Dream for this generation and generations to come.

We have been and must be once again the voice of the majority of Americans. It is up to us to expose the great Democrat fraud that is now being thrust upon this nation. Personal freedom, liberty, and a desire for self-governing are the timeless values that Americans hold dear.

In our Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote that there are certain inalienable rights, among them are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Those rights are not conferred upon us by the federal government, but by a power greater than any government.

The Democrats act as if the government is the provider of the very liberties we enjoy. No fashionable politician or president, no matter how popular, can give them to us nor will we allow them to take them from us.

We will stand up for countless Americans who worry about their bills, are defenseless in the face of foreclosures. We are with them, because we are them. Now is the time to organize ourselves and to demand the limited government and freedom we deserve.

Over the coming months Republicans will be bold in our approach. We will offer real solutions, and we will do so aggressively and without apology. We will focus on freedom and the freedom of the individual.

Odds, as I told you before, don't scare me. I am used to working against the odds imposed on us by critics, pundits and the otherwise clueless class. I know how to develop a team, implement a plan and deliver a victory. I am confident in this journey because I am taking it with you. I gain strength in this journey, because I gain it from you. Our Renaissance has begun. Our opportunities lie before us, and our cause is as true today as when we first began in 1854. So in the best spirit of President Reagan, it's time to saddle up and ride. Our country needs us.

SCULLY: You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?

OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we've made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we've seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.

So we've got a short-term problem, which is we had to spend a lot of money to salvage our financial system, we had to deal with the auto companies, a huge recession which drains tax revenue at the same time it's putting more pressure on governments to provide unemployment insurance or make sure that food stamps are available for people who have been laid off.

So we have a short-term problem and we also have a long-term problem. The short-term problem is dwarfed by the long-term problem. And the long-term problem is Medicaid and Medicare. If we don't reduce long-term health care inflation substantially, we can't get control of the deficit.

So, one option is just to do nothing. We say, well, it's too expensive for us to make some short-term investments in health care. We can't afford it. We've got this big deficit. Let's just keep the health care system that we've got now.

Along that trajectory, we will see health care cost as an overall share of our federal spending grow and grow and grow and grow until essentially it consumes everything...

OBAMA: Well, you know - look we are trying to help an auto industry that is going through a combination of bad decision making over many years and an unprecedented crisis or at least a crisis we haven't seen since the 1930's. And you know the economy is going to bounce back and we want to get out of the business of helping auto companies as quickly as we can. I have got more enough to do without that. In the same way that I want to get out of the business of helping banks, but we have to make some strategic decisions about strategic industries...

SCULLY: States like California in desperate financial situation, will you be forced to bail out the states?

OBAMA: No. I think that what you're seeing in states is that anytime you got a severe recession like this, as I said before, their demands on services are higher. So, they are sending more money out. At the same time, they're bringing less tax revenue in. And that's a painful adjustment, what we're going end up seeing is lot of states making very difficult choices there...

SCULLY: William Howard Taft served on the court after his presidency, would you have any interest in being on the Supreme Court?

My name is George C. Joseph. I am the sole owner of Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu, a family owned and operated business in Melbourne, Florida. My family bought and paid for this automobile franchise 35 years ago in 1974. I am the second generation to manage this business.

We currently employ 50+ people and before the economic slowdown we employed over 70 local people. We are active in the community and the local chamber of commerce. We deal with several dozen local vendors on a day to day basis and many more during a month. All depend on our business for part of their livelihood. We are financially strong with great respect in the market place and community. We have strong local presence and stability.

I work every day the store is open, nine to ten hours a day. I know most of our customers and all our employees. Sunshine Dodge is my life.

On Thursday, May 14, 2009 I was notified that my Dodge franchise, that we purchased, will be taken away from my family on June 9, 2009 without compensation and given to another dealer at no cost to them. My new vehicle inventory consists of 125 vehicles with a financed balance of 3 million dollars. This inventory becomes impossible to sell with no factory incentives beyond June 9, 2009. Without the Dodge franchise we can no longer sell a new Dodge as "new," nor will we be able to do any warranty service work. Additionally, my Dodge parts inventory, (approximately $300,000.) is virtually worthless without the ability to perform warranty service. There is no offer from Chrysler to buy back the vehicles or parts inventory.

Our facility was recently totally renovated at Chrysler's insistence, incurring a multi-million dollar debt in the form of a mortgage at Sun Trust Bank.

This is beyond imagination! My business is being stolen from me through NO FAULT OF OUR OWN. We did NOTHING wrong.

This atrocity will most likely force my family into bankruptcy. This will also cause our 50+ employees to be unemployed. How will they provide for their families? This is a total economic disaster.

Rich Lowry examines the logic of Nancy Pelosi’s position that the CIA lied to her:

Outlawing Opinions, by Chuck Norris (yes, he can write) (he can write and punch you both):

"The Worst Is Yet to Come": If You're Not Petrified, You're Not Paying Attention (this is about the US economy). The accompanying video is quite good. Howard Davidowitz is a very animated and fascinating speaker. One of his points is, money is being thrown at the most inefficient parts of the economy (if they are in trouble, by definition, they are weak and inefficient). This is a great article and video.

RUSH: Gotta listen to this sound bite, folks. This is our old buddy, the diminutive egghead Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, in Washington this afternoon at the National Press Club, being interviewed by the editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham. Here's the question for Timothy Geithner from Jon Meacham, "You have two children. The deficit over the next ten years is expected to hit $11 trillion. How do you feel about saddling your kids with that debt?"

GEITHNER: We face again this deep recession, damaged financial system. And our immediate imperative still is to get growth back on track. That requires us to do things that are expensive, that cost money, in the short term will raise deficits. At the same time we do that, we have to commit to Americans, to investors around the world that we're going to be able to get back to living within our own means when the crisis passed and when the recovery is established, we're going to have to get back to living within our means. And that's going to require demonstrating to people we're willing to stop doing things they've been doing, give up things that we don't want to give up, and that will be a challenge.

RUSH: Whoa wait a second, who's he talking about here? Because I know damn well he's not talking about the government giving up things. He's talking about you and me and apparently his own kids. So it's our fault. All of this is our fault. The reason we're in a recession is our fault and the government, to save us, has to spend all this debt, all this money. And once this crisis is over, we're going to have to get back to living within our means and that's going to require demonstrating to people willing to stop doing things we've been doing, give up things that we don't want to give up, and that will be a challenge. What's going to be the challenge? They're going to make us. They're going to make us give up these things. So there's your future, from the Treasury secretary of the Obama administration. You caused this, you gave us this recession, your irresponsibility, your desire, you wanted too much. You haven't given enough back. Now, when we get out of this recession you're going to have to give up a lot of things. We're going to have to return to a more austere lifestyle.

RUSH: In California today, voters are going to go to the polls to decide the fate of six ballot initiatives. Four of them would, if they pass, raise taxes on Californians. The Governator is not there. The Governator is in Washington along with Jennifer Granholm to celebrate the announcement by Obama today of these new auto emissions rules. They're going to add about -- well, if they're going to say $1,600 to the cost of the American family, double it at least by the time we get to 2016. Schwarzenegger has pushed heavily for all six ballot measures. They are designed to close California's $15 billion budget shortfall. But as the Heritage Foundation points out in a great story called Californication: "Even though Schwarzenegger's legacy depends on the passage of these initiatives, he will not be in California tonight to see the results. The Los Angeles Times reports: 'His absence in the face of widely forecast defeat drew mockery from his foes.' Instead Schwarzenegger will be in Washington, DC, where he is scheduled to join President Barack Obama at the White House to celebrate the federal adoption of auto emissions standards that mirror standards previously adopted by California."

Now, this is being called a win for California. The LA Times here is saying that the Governator succeeding in getting California emissions adopted for the nation is a big win for California. Well, that may be, folks, but it is a huge loss for the rest of the nation, and it may just be the first of many losses for the rest of the nation. Heritage Foundation points out today that for decades, California's been a leader in public policy innovation. Stick with me on this 'cause this is where the rubber meets the road here. A generation ago, 25, 30 years ago, California was at the forefront of a taxpayer revolt that eventually helped elect President Reagan and usher in three decades of prosperity. California is still exporting its public policy ideas. So how is California's experiment with the green economy going? Do you know what Channel 4 in LA has discovered? LA is called the greenest city in the country (laughing) and they have discovered that the street lights are on 24/7. The street lights are on in the daytime, and customers and citizens have been complaining about this waste, and the city hasn't been doing anything about it, they've been looking to blame the contractor or blame the department of public works or some such thing.

But it's even better than that. LA, the greenest city in the country, California with all of these great auto emissions standards, California imports more energy than any state in the country. When you drive through that state you're going to see solar panels everywhere, and you will see windmills everywhere. You are going to see cars on the highways everywhere. You're going to see traffic everywhere as you know it, and yet California imports more energy than any state in the country. As a result of that, it has some of the highest energy costs in the country, including the second highest commercial sector energy prices. Only Hawaii, which is ocean bound, has higher rates. Now, in addition to all the greening that's gone on in California resulting in the largest amount of energy imports in the country, California's unemployment rate hit 9.3% last December. That was up from 4.9% in December 2006. There are now one-and-a-half million Californians out of work. The state has the fourth highest housing foreclosure rate in the nation. California has lost more businesses than any state in recent years. California is facing a $40 billion budget deficit. In some small towns, unemployment is now running close to 35%, rivaling unemployment rates during the Great Depression. And what is the benefit to the environment of all of this? Absolutely zilch, zero, nada.

All of this economic pain supposedly for environmental gain has resulted in zero environmental gain. This is the exact same formula that the Waxman-Markey energy tax legislation offers the United States, cap and trade. It is the exact same thing this nation is headed for. It has been a disaster for California; it will be a disaster for the nation at large and as a whole. But you know how insistent Californians have been. They've got their own fuel emissions standards; they have their own fuel mixtures and blends. California imports more energy than any state in the country. Now, you might say, "Well, yeah, but, Rush, they got more population." Well, they're also the greenest. They have embarked on policies to reduce the need to import. What is the whole impetus behind Obama's cap-and-trade program? To reduce our dependence on foreign oil, to make us less susceptible to people who hate us and what's California showing us? It's a microcosm of what is ahead for the United States of America. They import more energy than any state in the country. Unemployment through the roof; budget deficits through the roof; six ballot initiatives today, four of which would raise taxes. The governor out of town; doesn't want to be anywhere near there when the results come in tonight.

The polls indicate that these things are going to go down in flames, that despite all, Californians don't want to pay higher taxes, even the majority lib population out there because they're starting to say, "It's not our fault, it's not our fault. The fact that we're not paying enough taxes is not the reason why you people in Sacramento can't control your spending." So all of these liberal do-good ideas, all of these feel-good things, all of these proposals and ideas that are going to make California the beacon of the country and show us the way on energy independence, have all failed miserably. Schwarzenegger is in Washington today to join Obama in spreading the same kind of energy policy nationwide that California has adopted for years, and this is being called in the LA Times a big win for California. Nothing could be further from the truth.

RUSH: Liberty Township, Ohio, this is Adelee, nice to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. I was just calling you to say that Europe uses nuclear power so if we were actually trying for energy independence we wouldn't be going for the wind or the solar. If we are trying to follow what Europe does, we'd be using nuclear power.

RUSH: Well, especially it's a good point about France. France is big into nuclear power, but you raise a good point here, Adelee. There's a way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil tremendously and there's a way to reduce the use of coal and that's nuclear. Oh, no, we can't have nuclear. Why? Because nuclear, well nuclear, we'll all melt, radiation, we'll die of radiation poisoning. We know that because of a movie called The China Syndrome in which Jane Fonda starred. That movie killed the nuclear industry and it was done on purpose. But there is an added reason why we don't go nuclear, and I want to take you back to my example. Obama is going to have us all driving putt-putts -- they get 35 1/2 to 39 miles a gallon -- by 2016. The purpose: use less oil, use less gasoline. This is to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We don't like those sheiks in the oil-producing states in the Middle East and we don't like being vulnerable so we're going to go driving little putt-putts. At the same time we do this, guess what we're going to do? We are going to save the planet from whatever this hoax climate change is. But then, understand something. When we're all driving these putt-putts and using less gasoline, that is going to equal less sales tax revenue, gas tax revenue, both to the feds and to the states. Any time you use less of a product, the tax take from it is less, so one of two things is going to happen. They're either going to have to raise taxes, which is the next step to come, raise taxes on gasoline.

Folks, this is the point. It is not that anybody at this press conference today, from Obama to Carol Browner or anybody else, they don't care about being dependent on foreign oil. There are ways that are much more efficient and make much more sense than 35 or 39 miles to the gallon in a putt-putt to reduce our use of foreign oil. They want the use of oil to continue. They just want the money for it. They don't want the sheiks getting the money, and they don't want foreign oil companies getting the money; Obama wants it. Washington wants the money. This is the first step, the universal or a national fuel efficiency standard is the first step toward them shifting the expenditure of dollars for oil overseas to Washington, one way or the other. Another thing that's going to happen here is that we're not going to use less oil. If we do, then you're going to see an appropriate contraction and decline in your standard of living and in the overall national economy.

You do not grow an economy by making things more expensive for average people to utilize. You do not grow an economy by raising the cost of living and with tamping down the standard of living. You don't do that. What you do is you encourage and facilitate the growth of government which is going to be collecting all of the revenue that would normally be used as disposable income in your own family. They're going to get it. The states are going to get it, the federal government is going to get it, and you're going to have less of what you earn because you're going to be spending more of it, even though you're told today that you're going to have to drive a car that gets 35 to 39 miles a gallon and, voila, you're going to be using less gasoline. If you think that's going to add up to a lot of savings, you wait. We've already seen the evidence. In North Carolina they had a drought, so they reduced water usage. They did the same thing here. Had a drought, you can only use water once a week. Then they found out wait, wait a minute, our taxes from the water utility are going way down, so they raised the rates, water prices, if you will, utility prices in North Carolina and Florida, after they enforced less usage. Same thing is going to happen here.

In fact, it's already happened in California. When people already started buying putt-putts on their own and started using less gasoline, didn't take long for Sacramento to realize that their gas tax revenue was down. So they started talking about how to raise taxes, and in California today, after all of these brilliant, massive economic improvements, after all of this cutting-edge environmental improvements, all of these green adds, windmills and solar panels and new formulations of gasoline, California today, which imports more energy than any state in the country, and today there are six ballot initiatives, people going to the polls in California and four of them are to raise taxes after all of these steps were taken to save the state, to save the planet, to save the country, to save on our environmental expenditures. And it just hasn't worked, has it? So what you're seeing in California today is a little microcosm of what's headed our way, now specifically since Obama and Carol Browner have announced this silly nationwide CAFE standard tailpipe emissions limit and mileage of 35.9 miles per gallon.

Now, I know some of you saying, "Rush, what is wrong with cars that pollute less?" Nothing. There's not a thing in the world wrong with that. But that's not what this is about, folks. None of what Obama says is his motive is his motive. His motive is designed to get you on board and in love with the idea of how much he cares about saving the planet, the country and you. This is all about increasing revenue to the states and the federal government while at the same time taking money away from you and having a little bit more control over what you do. If you want to drive a putt-putt you ought to be able to drive a putt-putt, but if you don't want to drive a putt-putt you shouldn't have to drive a putt-putt. Once they make us all start driving putt-putts then they're going to say you can't get the big TV you want or whatever it is. There are going to be limits on it because it's destroying the country or the planet or somehow it's unfair to those who can't have it, you name it. There will be limits.

RUSH: All right, now, Obama, Carol Browner. This benevolent administration wants to "work with the auto companies," right? Last night Neil Cavuto interviewed Jim Anderer. He is a Chrysler dealer who's been shut down. Cavuto said, "Long Island, New York, Chrysler dealer Jim Anderer says that they're shutting them down even though his dealership is making them a lot of money. They shouldn't be shutting you down, Jim. What did they say in their letter to you?"

ANDERER: They won't give us a solid explanation. They come up with all these reasons, but none of them seem to make sense.

ANDERER: Well, they'll say they want to combine all the stores, or they say that the dealers cost the manufacturer money to keep in business. And all of these might be true in some cases, but in the dealers that they cut, there seems to be no cohesive way that they did it. There was no process that you could put your finger on and say, "Hey, we cut 25% of the lowest performing dealers." They didn't do that, okay? Nobody will give us a real clear explanation or formula that they came up with.

RUSH: Now, why do you think that might be? I mean, I could only hazard a guess here. Do you think that the Obama administration -- "working with" Chrysler, heh, heh, heh; working with the automobile manufacturers, working with the dealers -- they're just randomly taking a look at a list and saying, "Eh, we don't need this one in Long Island, chop it. We don't need that one in Portland, chop it. We don't need that one in San Antonio, chop it"? Do you think they're doing that, or do you think maybe...? I just throw this out there as a possibility. Do you think maybe Obama and his administration are targeting dealerships that happen to be run and owned by Republicans? I don't know this.

I'm being led to speculate because Mr. Anderer says he doesn't know why his high-performing dealership was shut down, and he can't find a formula. He can't find a coherent plan to explain why they're shutting down successful dealerships in the Chrysler network. (interruption) Well, you joke about it being about penalizing success, but what the hell... That would be the theme of this administration: "We're going to penalize success." By the way, coming up later in the program, the details of this: how many of you are paying your home mortgage on time and have been, and have learned that you are also going to be subsidizing people who shouldn't have gotten a mortgage in the first place? (interruption) All right. Snerdley raises his hand.

How many of you pay your credit card bills on time? How many of you pay them off every 30 days? Guess what? You're going to be penalized. People who pay off their credit cards in 30 days, there's a series of things that are going to happen to you. You know, you get a lot of perks and a lot of points and frequent flier miles and maybe cash-back privileges and so forth. All that, or a lot of that that, is going to be eliminated. In addition they're going to start charging you interest from the day you make the purchase rather than 25 or 30 days after you make the purchase. You know why this is being done? I just said that even for those of you who pay off your credit cards in 30 days, to escape any interest or finance charges, some of these companies are going to start charging...

I don't know the names of which ones yet but some of these finance companies and banks that run credit cards, are going to start charging interest on your purchase from the day you make the purchase, not give you a three-week or four-week grace period before they start the finance charges. Now, do you know why they're doing this? They're doing this to help you subsidize the people that don't pay, the people that run late, the people that don't pay their bills on time. And it's going to lower their interest rates. Now, you think that we joke when we say this is an attack on achievers? That this administration is targeting the achievers? You pay your mortgage on time; you're going to subsidize those who shouldn't have been given one in the first place.

You pay your credit cards off on time -- even if you pay them off on time with the minimum payment -- you're still going to have additional payments attached so that the people who are delinquent have an easier time of it. This is a theme of this administration. This is just another way of redistributing wealth, and this is a way that is hidden, and I doubt that too many people are going to find about it 'til the practice is implemented and you start getting your bills. We have some more sound bites here with Jim Anderer, the Chrysler dealer out on Long Island. Cavuto said, "Well, look you think they have it out for the personally, Jim? If you can't find out why they're shutting you down."

ANDERER: No, no, no. But I think there is a lot of favored dealers, there is some collusion.

CAVUTO: Do you know unequivocally of dealers who are pathetic, who are not getting it done, who have been saved?

ANDERER: Yes. I -- I don't want to do that because, you know, a lot of these guys are friends of mine. But, you know, the numbers are there. The numbers reveal that. Okay? Right on Long Island, there's some guys who really shouldn't be there. But I'm not going to reveal their names.

ANDERER: This is insanity. The government is stealing my business. Well, I cannot accept that as a patriotic American. I was raised in this country to believe that if I work hard and I achieve what I was going after -- and I did! I did it! I got it, and now all of a sudden because, you know, we have a president who pushes Chrysler into bankruptcy and puts all of the UAW workers out...? Didn't have to. Maybe some would have to go out but not all of them, okay. This doesn't happen in America. This is still America, I think. I mean, this isn't Stalinist Russia. This is not Nazi Germany where the troopers say you're out and their buddies are in. That's what I'm faced with.

RUSH: That's a Chrysler dealer, folks, Jim Anderer in Long Island, comparing what's happening to him to Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. He believed in the American dream. He went for it; he got it. Now they want to take it away from him. And this is why more and more people think they're not safe, that if the government targets them and their wealth -- the things that they have achieved -- that they're going to have it taken away from them, under some auspices of goodwill for everybody else. Now, this is one segment here, but this is the Chrysler dealers. I know of a dealer out in Portland, and the same thing has happened to him, a leading dealer. They're being shut down and they're being left to eat the inventory that they have on their lot. Furthermore, the dealer in Portland was told some months ago, "Please take additional inventory from the factory. You're going to be okay. We'll back you up." They did it, and they're saddled now with inventory that they're not going to be able to sell that's gonna wipe 'em out financially. All brought to you by the Obama administration.

RUSH: Brittany in Temecula, California. She's 20 years old. It's great to have you with us.

CALLER: Like my dad says, Rush: I agree with you 1% of the time and the other 99 you agree with me.

CALLER: You are welcome. So I wanted to share with you a little story. Every night my 15-year-old sister and I -- and I am 20 -- spend two, maybe one, two hours talking about current events, news, and yesterday was angry teenagers. And she expressed to me that in high school, you meet a lot of angry teenagers. And they attack first and never think later type thing and they always are self-proclaimed liberals. And my thing is the liberals in Washington are just like teenagers because they react on impulse and emotion, never thinking anything through. And that's why teenagers cling to the left, like Christians cling to our guns and our God. So that's, I think... Because I'm so focused on getting the youth movement going, and I read today on Yahoo they always have those stories that the hip-hop movement is getting the youth movement going. But I feel like I can't be a part of that movement because their movement is all for Obama. And they cling to one another.

CALLER: It is, especially when we've got most of them like Jay-Z talking about the white devil in the president's house, you know, before. You know, when Bush was still in power.

CALLER: Yeah, so I can't be a part of that group. Just wanted to feel, just wanted to vent, just wanted to share that with you.

RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. We've gotten a lot of calls since the Easter break, the spring break, a lot of calls from young people like you, and it's very comforting to the people that listen to this program to hear people like you out there and understand that you have a solid grip on things. Yeah, there's anger everywhere. I'm surprised at it because the people that are angry are the people who are winning. Their people are winning elections, they're winning on the policy battles and they're still mad. They're still angry. They're perpetually angry! They're perpetually enraged. And people have asked me why.

I don't know. I can't relate to being mad all the time. I don't want to be mad all the time. I don't want to wake up mad. I don't want to go to bed mad. I don't want to spend all day mad. There are a lot of people that do it, though, and I, frankly, I don't understand it. It's not something that I want to try to parse and analyze. All I know is that they're not the people are going to get anything done. The constant complaining and whining and anger has got a root cause somewhere, and it all equals is unhappiness and dissatisfaction. And they end up striking out at people like you and your sister and blaming everybody else for the fact that they don't feel very happy, when in fact they need to look inward.

RUSH: We have sound bites from President Obama announcing all these new fuel standards here at the White House moments ago coming up. I want to explain what CAFE is. Snerdley just asked me a very relevant and important question and I thought I should explain it to all of you. And, by the way, for those of you new to the program -- and there are gazillions of people new to this program -- this program is quite often caricatured, comments are taken way out of context. For example, the discussion in the first hour today could easily be taken out of context by people who want to make me look as though I'm against clean air, efficiency, and saving the world, saving the planet. I'm against none of that. I just don't think that's what this is about. I think this is simply the way that this stuff is sold.

Another example: Obama is gonna fight obesity. How? By making food more expensive. We're going to fight obesity by making food more expensive. Food is a staple, can't do without it. Food and economical food prices have been a staple. The markup on food in a grocery store is 1%. All the other stuff that's not food is where they make their money. But people have to eat. And, of course, the market takes care of pricing things in a manner that people can afford them. In fact, I had a story in the stack yesterday, I didn't get a chance to get to it, but obesity is said to be worse in the poor neighborhoods of America. In truth, where Walmarts are located, obesity has been shown to be reduced. People are able to afford fresh, healthy food at a Walmart, and they buy it, rather than the prepackaged processed stuff. They buy it and the people are eating healthier because of lower prices at Walmart. We don't have to raise prices to battle obesity. We don't have to raise prices to save the planet. And we don't have to get rid of oil to save the planet.

If you want to understand my position on all this, understand that it comes from a desire to maintain the individual liberty and freedom this country was founded with, and that's the assault that's taking place here. The assault is on your liberty and your freedom, and it's, of course, under the guise of taking care of you. You're not competent enough to buy the right kind of car; you're not competent enough to buy the right kind of food; you're not competent enough to bank at the right bank; you're not competent enough to do anything. Government has to make these decisions for you because otherwise you will destroy the planet. And now since everybody in their life wants to have meaning, what greater meaning could your life have if somebody comes along and tells you that driving X car is going to help save the planet? What could have more meaning in your life than for you to think you're saving the planet? So it's very Machiavellian and very Orwellian the way all of this stuff is pitched. But my opposition to it has to do with the fact that I don't think there's anything wrong with this country.

This country leads the world in virtually every category. Well, we might be losing some ground in education. This country defined the increase in lifestyle, the expansion of freedom. This country led the way, and we did it with capitalism. And now all of a sudden for some reason this needs to be deconstructed, it needs to be torn down, somehow we've become the evil of the world? Somehow we are the big problem in the world? I don't think so. I don't buy that. But guilt sells. Guilt is an easy thing to make people feel: guilt over destroying the planet; guilt over wasting resources; guilt over having too much money; guilt over having too much education when others don't have; guilt over having a house when others don't have a house. And it's all being used to get everybody to agree to roll back their own lifestyle, which is going to adversarial affect the overall status of the United States of America.

This is a great country, and we have gotten to where we are the exact opposite of what Obama is saying that we need to do. But Obama believes that we're immoral the way that we are, that we're unjust the way we are, and we've now gotta pay for it, we've gotta pay for our unjustness, and we have to pay for our gluttony, we have to pay for our slovenliness, and we have to pay for our greed. How we going to do that? By giving him and Washington more and more of the money we produce to let them use in ways that will make America pure once again, when all it is, folks, is a power grab on the part of the power hungry people who also happen to be liberals, who simply want to take control of as much as possible, not because they think they're going to improve it, but because they don't want any opposition.

They don't want to have to fight for what they succeed in. They don't want to have to fight in the arena of ideas to prevail at election time. They want a free ride and they want themselves to be interminable control of the elements of this country that produce greatness. They think they can do a better job, maybe we'll give them the benefit of the doubt on that, but they won't. There is no way that any government like the one Obama has set up has proved any greatness, has improved its lifestyles or its people. It just has not happened wherever it's been tried in the world. So my objection to all this is not based on opposing their objectives of a clean car, clean water, clean air, safe planet. My objection is to my loss of freedom and yours. My objection is to our eventual loss of the elements of the human existence that have defined the greatness of the United States of America for 200-plus years. That's what's at stake, that's what's under assault here, by a bunch of people who think this country is unjust and immoral and has been since before they came to power. Now it's time for us to pay the price for our greed, our gluttony, slovenliness, and for the destruction of the planet. So here's Obama, we've got some sound bites here, this afternoon, White House Rose Garden, first of a series of sound bites on this new emissions bill.

OBAMA: Thank you all for coming to the White House today and for coming together around what I consider to be a historic agreement, to help America break its dependence on oil, reduce harmful pollution, and begin the transition to a clean energy economy. This is an extraordinary gathering. Here we have today, standing behind me, along with Ron Gettelfinger and leadership of the UAW, we have ten of the world's largest auto manufacturers, we have environmental advocates, as well as elected officials from all across the country.

RUSH: See how this works? Why, all the wizards of smart agree with Obama, we have to do this. He applauds the auto industry for joining with him. What choice do they have? If they don't join with him he's going to take 'em over, and he's going to take 'em over anyway. Stunning. And you'll hear it coming up in a minute in another series of sound bites, stunning to see how the American private sector is now operating and living in total fear of this one man and his administration. Obama says he's brought all these people together, but he doesn't say how he did it. He did it through fear of an authoritarian, oppressive government.

OBAMA: These are folks who have occasionally been at odds, for years, even decades. In fact, some of the groups here have been embroiled in lawsuits against one another. So that gives you a sense of how impressive and significant it is that these leaders from across the country are willing to set aside the past for the sake of the future. For what everyone here believes, even as views differ on many important issues, is that the status quo is no longer acceptable. While the United States makes up less than 5% of the world's population, we create roughly a quarter of the world's demand for oil, and this appetite comes at a tremendous price.

RUSH: I have been hearing this statistic my whole adult life, as evidence of the immorality and greed of the United States of America. We make up less than 5% of the world's population, but we use 25% of the world's resources. Now he's tailoring it specifically to oil. Well, the way to look at that is not to say that the United States is immoral and unjust and greedy and selfish. The way to look at it is how did that happen in the first place? Did we not create lifestyles and prosperity and wealth for all of our citizens that is the envy of the world? We have liberated billions of people from oppression, slavery, and bondage. We have developed with our wealth and our freedom the cure for lots of diseases, and we have shared our successes with people all over the world. We have used our success in utilizing energy to expand our economy, to feed the world. Our agriculture outproduces anyplace else in the world. We are the one nation on earth that can help rebuild entire nations after disasters or wars, and we have done it. Now, you don't do that on the cheap.

The idea that we are 5% of the world's population but using 25% of the world's resources, that statement is made specifically to convince you that we are, by that definition, evil, that, by that definition, we are wrong, by that definition, we alone are guilty. We were not entitled to these resources. Well, a lot of the world is catching up with us on the use of oil, and they are doing things that we used to do. Their lifestyles, their people's lifestyles are expanding, and we're putting no controls on them. Their governments want their people prosperous, they want them happy. But this whole notion, folks, that the United States is by its very definition and by its very existence evil and guilty just offends the hell out of me. And now all of a sudden with this man, Barack Obama, on the scene, we are going to set aside the past for the sake of the future. We are going to apologize for all of the things wrong with the United States of America. Once again, Barack Obama, in this statement, is essentially doing the same thing as when he travels to foreign countries and apologizes for this country. He is apologizing to the world in this statement, and he is acknowledging and he is promising the rest of the world he is going to reduce the strength and power of the United States. He is going to weaken us because he also believes that there's no reason for the world to have a single superpower.

It's not as though we've seized this power, it's not as though we stole it from anybody else. It's that it was created by virtue of our Constitution, Declaration of Independence, the way our nation was assembled and put together. The DNA of the American human being is no different than the DNA of any human anywhere in the world. We were not born with special God-given privileges that other people don't have. We are constituted and formed as a nation in ways that allowed the full spread and depth of human potential to flower and prosper, and it was the flowering and the prospering of that of human potential which led and created the greatest nation for people in the history of humanity, and now it's being dismantled. It's being dismantled by a man who has no appreciation for the greatness of the country, in fact resents it, blames this country for whatever evils and problems he sees around the world, and that's what 39 miles a gallon's all about, and that's what all these taxes and increased prices, cost of living, is what it's all about. It's about chopping us down in size. Next sound bite.

OBAMA: The state of California has also agreed to support this standard, and I want to applaud California, Governor Schwarzenegger, and the entire California delegation for their extraordinary leadership. They have led the way on this as they have on so many other efforts, to protect the environment.

RUSH: Take a look at California if you want to know what Barack Obama has in store for the United States. That's why I opened the program with the stats in California. Take a look at California. It's bankrupt. They have budget deficits higher than ever. They have six ballot initiatives on the ballot today, people are voting. Massive, massive tax increases. California imports more energy than any state in the country, and we are going to praise California and import their way of doing things, under the guise of reducing imports, under the guise of reducing the importation of foreign oil? California imports more energy than any state in the country, after going green for all these years and having even more stringent mileage standards than we, as a nation, have had. After requiring more blends of gasoline, they still got the smog, they still got all the pollution, they still have it all, they still have people paying taxes out the wazoo, they are still bankrupt. And the president of the United States praises the governor of that state and said, "This is what's ahead for us." It makes no sense, unless you look at it from the standpoint of, we need to chop the United States down to size like California has been chopped down to size.

RUSH: Hey, a quick question here, folks. If we're going to become less reliant on imported energy, where are we going to make up the difference? No, it's a serious question. If we're going to become less reliant on imported energy -- forget oil. Add up all forms of energy. If we're going to become less reliant on imported energy, where we going to make up the difference? If we import less, where are we gonna get the difference? Oh, we're not going to use that energy? We're going to reduce our energy consumption, is that right? Oh! And that's how we're going to save the planet, huh? Have you ever taken a moment to stop and think about that: "to actually use less energy," what that would mean? Hasn't the United States always stood for growth and expansion? Don't you think that's the root of the belief in America, of all parents, that they want a better life for their kids than they even had for themselves? The country has to grow. There are more and more people. The economy has to expand. Opportunity has to expand. Results have to expand. Where are we going to get this energy that we are not going to be importing? Are we going to drill for it? His teleprompter must have stopped halfway through the speech because I didn't hear anything about replacing the energy that we are no longer going to import. All right, here's Obama, the car salesman again. Everybody wins! Your car is gonna pay off in three years.

OBAMA: It costs money to develop these vehicles, but even as the price to build these cars and trucks goes up, the cost of driving these vehicles will go down --

OBAMA: -- and this is a point I want to emphasize. If you buy a car, your investment in a more fuel-efficient vehicle as a result of this standard --

OBAMA: In three years' time you will (have) paid off the additional investment required.

OBAMA: Over the life of the vehicle, the typical driver would save about $2,800 by getting better gas mileage. Everyone wins.

RUSH: Do you understand what he's saying here? Your car, your average price going to go up 1,600 bucks, but you're going to pay it off in three years and you're going to save money because...why? Because this little putt-putt is going to get more mileage, and you're going to use less gasoline. Then what that happens is the gasoline tax is going to go up to make up for the loss because there's one thing we know, and that is that government -- state, federal government, city governments -- do not do with less. They will never do with less, and when it comes time to raise gasoline taxes to accommodate the shortage brought about by the usage of less gasoline, you know how they'll do it?

They'll say, "We're going to have to cut the military, or we're going to have to cut police. We're going to have to cut doctors, going to have to cut nurses. We're going to have to cut the fire department! We're going to have to cut first responders. We gotta have cuts."

"No, please don't cut the cops! We got a bad enough crime problem as it is. Please don't cut the nurses and doctors! We need health care, please!" So you're not going to be saving any money. You're just going to be driving around in a car you don't want, and the only solace you're going to have as you drive around in this little peanut car is if you can convince yourself somehow -- while you watch airplanes fly in the sky, and while you watch cargo trucks on the highway imperiling your safety -- you're going to have to convince yourself you're somehow saving the planet, because all of this is gonna cost you much more than $1,300 a car. Mark my words. By design, it's going to cost you more.

RUSH: Now, I want you to listen to this next bite, because here President Obama admits that oil is the engine, it's the fuel in the engine of our economy. And it's gonna take a while for him to tear it down. But listen to the evils that have resulted from the use of oil.

OBAMA: We have, over the course of decades, slowly built an economy that runs on oil, that has given us much of what we have, for good but also for ill. It has transformed the way we live and work but it's also wreaked havoc on our climate. It's helped to create gains on prosperity unprecedented in our history but it also places our future in jeopardy. Ending this dependence will take time. It will take an incredible effort. It will take, uh, er, um, a historic investment in innovation. But more than anything, it will take a willingness to look past our differences, to act in good-faith --

OBAMA: -- to refuse to continue the failures of the past, and to take on this challenge together --

RUSH: We've gotta look past our differences. No. No. Obama will listen. Oh, yeah, Obama will listen to what we say. He won't listen. He may listen, not pay attention. There's no looking past differences. Whatever differences you have with Obama are dead. They don't exist. "Look past our difference"s is a code phrase. "You've gotta forget everything you ever thought and you've gotta agree with me. I am the answer. I am the light. Oil? Yeah, we've done great things with it but it's destroying the planet." You see the guilt trip? See the guilty trip here? And how about Obama predicting all these prices? This is 2009, right? In 2016, average price of a car up 1,600 bucks? Wanna bet? The average price would be up 1,600 bucks if we didn't do anything. Just inflation alone will be up more. These central planners think they can dictate price in the future. They have no clue. He has no clue what he's talking about in terms of being accurate specifically about the changes to be had in the future. All he knows is, all he wants is for you to acquiesce to all this and just give it up.

Now, I want to play a sound bite. There's a big argument going on in the Republican Party over what we must be. "We have to be a big-tent party. We have to allow all kinds of people in with various divergent points of view. We must let the moderates run the party." They do now, by the way. The moderates run the Republican Party; make no mistake about it. "We must become more moderate if we are to engage in electoral victory," and so here you have a radical liberal Democrat president, the most radical liberal administration in the nation's history every day programs that will destroy the essence of America.

RUSH: All right, back to the phones, to Marie in Pelion, South Carolina. Glad that you waited. Hello.

CALLER: Real quick, before I get to what I told Mr. Snerdley. If you want to look at an industry in terror, in what so-called standardization does for you, you need to look in the health insurance industry. We are getting ready to drop a cool 50 to $75 million implementing a government standard that changes every six months. So there's real terror.

CALLER: Well, and you know what's sad, Rush, is that the Republicans are the ones that started this particular standard. So that he was very surprising.

RUSH: Well, I'm not surprised. The Republicans have been trying to emulate Democrats for a long time. They see how popular they think Democrats are; they see how the press loves Democrats. They want to be loved! They want the press to love them. And so emulate Democrats. Then they believe that if the American people want something, whether it's good or bad for them, go ahead and try to make it look like you're giving it to them. That's what we need more of. Expand the Republican Party that way. That's right. That's how we build a broad base, by just saying, "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah." It's insanity.

CALLER: Well, here's my question, Rush. They say $1,600 now in addition to the price of the car. Three months ago we heard that the legacy costs of $1,300 were what was killing domestic auto manufacturers.

CALLER: So we're adding all these extra costs onto our vehicles, and then we're wondering why our vehicles don't sell. Why would he do this? Is this a backhanded way to try to get Ford under the bus finally?

RUSH: It could be, but the only way to get people into cars they don't want is to give them no choice. What do you think this business of raising the CAFE standards is? Let me explain CAFE for those of you that don't understand it. It's Corporate Average Fuel Economy. What this means (as I understand it, anyway) is that you've got a manufacturer -- let's say, in this case, Obama Motors. And Obama Motors has to meet, by 2016, a Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard of 39 1/2 miles a gallon. That means that of all the manufactured cars in their fleet, from the putt-putts up to the SUVs, the average mileage of the entire must equal 35 or 39 miles a gallon.

Now, if you manufacture an SUV that gets 12 to 14 miles to the gallon, and if more people buy those, than your other cars... You're going to have to have these little putt-putts get far more than 39 miles a gallon to average out to 39. So the purpose here is while you have shown no desire to, en masse, go out and buy these hybrids or these putt-putts, the objective here is to give you no choice in the matter. You're going to have to buy one of these, regardless what it costs, and you're going to have to buy it because it's the only thing that's gonna exist. Now, you might be asking -- and it's a reasonable question -- "Well, okay, but what about big trucks? What about the semis, the 18-wheelers that transport cargo and freight all over the country? What are you going to do about that?"

Well, those are not automobile manufacturers. Those are truck manufacturers, and they use diesel.

The odds are we're not going to stop flying. We can't. I mean, we could, but we'd just wreck everything. So while you're driving in your putt-putt out on I-70, Mr. Old 18-Wheeler in the Peterbilt is going to be tooling by you, and you look overhead and there goes Mr. 747. He's going to be flying above you -- or Mr. 757 or Mr. 777 or Mr. DC-9, whatever is up there -- and you're going to say, "Well, what the hell? How come I'm driving the putt-putt if all this other stuff is around there? What about the pollution they're putting out there?"

The answer is going to be, "Well, there are far more of you driving automobiles than there are airplanes in the sky and big 18-wheelers, and so the contributions made to reducing greenhouse gases and saving the planet are profound because you are being forced to drive these little putt-putts."

Let's not even talk about the safety factor of Mr. Peterbilt and his 18 wheels tooling by you in your putt-putt at 70, 75 -- if your putt-putt will do 70 or 75. And if your putt-putt does 70 or 75 what kind of mileage is it going to get doing 70 or 75? And then what are you gonna transport your family? Do you really think we're going to be without SUVs? Do you think that when the president, whoever it is, of the United States hits the road, he's going to do without his Chevrolet suburbans that the Secret Service is in and that caravan? Do you think they're going to stop making them? Think they're going to stop making trucks? What about people that work on farms and agriculture that go ahead and they buy trucks at dealerships?

Pickups, semis, whatever. Do you think they're going to do away with them? I have heard about getting rid of them. They're going to still be there. We cannot have American commerce without trucks. You cannot have American commerce without SUVs. Your little putt-putts? How many putt-putts are you gonna need to get your family of six to wherever you're going? How many putt-putts is it going to take to get all of your groceries and the stuff from Costco or whatever, Sam's Club, home? How many of these is it going to take? Are you going to be able to do everything you do now? See, an SUV is efficient. An SUV transports lots of people. An SUV conveys a lot of cargo and goods. In an SUV or a truck or even a large four-door sedan, you can get what you need at the local Costco and get it home. What if you need two putt-putts to do the same?

Well, then they'll tell you to stop consuming so much because you're putting stress on oil and the planet by consuming too much, which is putting too much stress on manufacturers. But I just want you to deal with the logic of this. You know damn well they're not going to get rid of 18-wheelers. They're not going to get rid of Big Oil tankers. They're not going to get rid of oceangoing vessels that transport a lot of cargo. Now, you may be hearing about all these grand designs. There are going to be sailboats, all these cargo ships with giant sails on them? I guarantee you if they ever did that (which they won't) you talk about interrupting the flow of goods and commerce over the world's oceans? These ships are going to have a motor on them for when the wind doesn't cooperate, and you can't dock 'em without a motor. You can't rely on the wind.

All of this, all of this is aimed at you, the average guy. It's all aimed at you, the little guy. You're the one! You're being targeted; you're being blamed. You're the one that's going to have to get out of the vehicle of your choice while Pelosi and Harry Reid are driving around in their SUV convoys. So is the president. So are all the governors. So are all the heavyweight hot rods at state and local governments who think they're too important to be driving around in the putt-putts. You're going to be in the putt-putt. But all these other cars are going to be manufactured. Now, they may try to make some show about an SUV getting 30 miles to the gallon as opposed to whatever it gets now and maybe with technology down the road that's possible. But it isn't on the horizon. When I hear this stuff, I just can't help but ask the obvious question. "Well, what about the SUVs? What about trucks? What about the 18-wheelers? If we're destroying the planet, if we really gotta stop our dependence on oil, are we going to ground airplanes?"

RUSH: Dingy Harry "became the latest Democrat to stray into rhetorical trouble Tuesday, botching statements on three subjects in one news conference -- including the fragile health of the chamber's most senior members." Before the program ended yesterday, I saw Drudge had it up there that Senator Kennedy's cancer was in remission, and it was a story from TheHill.com. It cleared at 2:44. I didn't have a chance to mention before the program ended. Then when I got home and I fired up the computer it wasn't there anymore, and then I found out why, because Dingy Harry was wrong. He was asked if Senator Kennedy's cancer was in remission. He said, "As far as I know it is. Yes," but the office of Senator Kennedy refused to confirm his comments or make any statement in response. The public silence is a classic Washington disavowal. Dingy Harry was wrong. He also said Robert Byrd was going to get out of the hospital that day. No, he's not. He's still in the hospital and may be in there for a long time.

RUSH: My name yesterday again graced the presence of the United States Senate, courtesy of Illinois Senator Dick Durbin.

DURBIN: The two most vocal supporters of keeping Guantanamo open are former Vice President Dick Cheney and talk show host Rush Limbo. (sic) When it comes to the national security of the United States of America I will side with Colin Powell and John McCain over Vice President Cheney and Rush Limbaugh. According to experts, Guantanamo, unfortunately, has become a recruiting tool for Al-Qaeda that is hurting America's security.

RUSH: Now, wait just a second. This doesn't jibe with the news today. The news today is that the Democrats in the Senate are not going to give Obama the money to close Guantanamo Bay. Now, two things about this. First is that Obama admits he doesn't know diddly-squat about Guantanamo Bay when he just unilaterally says he's going to close it in a year. Then the Democrats come along and say, "Well, we're not going to fund the closing of it," and people come to the wrong conclusion about this. People think that the Democrats realize there's some really dangerous people down there. That's not it. It's to give Obama cover. This is to cover Obama's ignorance! This is to cover Obama's stupidity last January in unilaterally announcing that Club Gitmo will close in January of 2010. It can't close if they don't give him the money.

But I don't understand what Durbin is talking about here. It seems to be, Senator "Turban," that a lot of Democrats want to keep Gitmo open including your leader, Dingy Harry, who had some really strange things to say about this. The audio is coming up here in just a second. The only two people want to keep it open are Cheney and me? (laughing) And then it's become an Al-Qaeda recruiting tool? This is the first I've heard that one. Have you heard that before? So Gitmo became an Al-Qaeda recruitment tool, meaning we put Al-Qaeda terrorists in there, and then we put other terrorists in there, and we put other terrorists -- as we capture them, we put them in there -- and somehow people who are already terrorists are going to be recruited to terror? (interruption) Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Al-Qaeda uses it as propaganda to recruit terrorists in the Middle East, to show how evil we are to terrorists at Club Gitmo.

Ohhh! Oh, I get it. I get it. So it's all part of this theory that we create more terrorists. I got you. Okay. There aren't any stories out there to that effect, or there are no stories. There's no empirical evidence. There's more evidence that we evolved from that lemur monkey, 47 million years old, than there is that Guantanamo Bay created more terrorists. (interruption) Yeah, and if we moved them to the US, all this would stop. Yeah, exactly right. Okay. Well, do you want to examine why Gitmo is -- if it is, if it is, why Gitmo is -- a recruiting tool for Al-Qaeda, Senator Durbin? If anybody enabled Club Gitmo to be used as a recruiting tool, it was Senator Dick Durbin in June of 2005.

DURBIN 2005: If I read this to you and didn't tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have happened by Nazis, Soviets in their Gulags, or some mad regime, Pol Pot or others, that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that's not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of our -- their -- own prisoners.

RUSH: Now, I would say that that statement by Dick Durbin, which got aired all over the world, probably created more terrorists than anything at Club Gitmo going on -- and he eventually had to apologize for this, comparing American interrogators to members of Pol Pot's regime, the Nazis, the Soviets in their gulags.

Let's move on now to Dingy Harry. I've often wondered why it is that Dingy Harry and Nancy Pelosi get along so well. The reason... You know, sometimes House speakers and Senate majority leaders of the same party don't get along well because the Senate operates much slower than the House does, and the House is out there thinking they're doing great things and the Senate's putting the brakes on it, and this can lead to tension between a House speaker and a Senate majority leader of the same party. But Dingy Harry and Pelosi seem to get along so well, and I've concluded it's because they're about equal in brain power.

REID: Democrats under no circumstances will move forward without a comprehensive, responsible plan from the president. We will never allow a terrorist to be -- to be released into the United States.

RUSH: (laughing) Okay. Now obviously there's some polling data out there: "Do not let these people go. Do not even bring 'em here." Now, Dingy Harry somewhere has gotten the impression that Obama and Eric Holder are just gonna release these people, 'cause I think Holder implied that once. Eric Holder, Obama's attorney general, implied that, "Hey, I mean some of these people, we're holding illegally. We're going to release 'em here." Most of them, if they are brought here, will be put in prisons, but they're still going to be in your neighborhood. You're still going to be paying for them, and they're going to have ACLU lawyers out there trying to get 'em out. So Dingy Harry says, "We will never allow terrorist to be released in the United States." The Democrats are all caterwauling, nobody ever said they were going to be. Then Dingy Harry, a reporter said, "Well, what about imprisoned in the United States?"

REID: Part of what we don't want is them to be put in prisons in the United States. We don't want 'em around the United States.

RUSH: Whoa. All of a sudden these guys are tough on terrorists. I mean, it was just a year ago that these people were innocent. These people were just the salt of the earth, you know? They had all of their rights violated; Bush and Cheney were out there committing all these crimes against them, and now all of a sudden the Democrats don't want these people even in prison in this country. (interruption) Yes Mr. Snerdley? Mmm-hmm. Okay. We don't want 'em. That's true. If we don't want 'em -- and Eric Holder went around, he went to Germany and he asked all of our allies to take a couple of them. Their original countries don't want them, which I can't figure out.

If they're all innocent -- if they're being held illegally in violation of human rights, if we have no evidence -- what the hell? Let 'em become cabdrivers in New York City. Now all of a sudden these people, we can't release them to prisons here? I tell you, this is cover for Obama 'cause the little boy president went out there and did something absolutely ignorant and stupid, and he's gotta be covered for it now. The solution is the Cheney-Limbaugh policy: Keep it open! Which is what is going to happen: Keep it open! It was never a problem in the first place. It was a manufactured problem, a propaganda problem created by the Democrats. Now, after the reporter said, "Well, what about having them imprisoned in the United States?" Dingy Harry, who yesterday said that Senator Kennedy's cancer is in remission when it's not, said this...

REID: I'm saying that the United States Senate, Democrats and Republicans, do not want terrorists to be released into the United States. That's very clear.

REPORTER: Nobody is talking about releasing them. They're talking about putting them in prison somewhere in the United States.

REID: I can't -- I can't -- I can't make it any more clear than the statement I have given to you. We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States.

RUSH: So this is focus group language. He's gotta go out there. He focus grouped this. He's gotta say "terrorists," because the country will never believe that Obama wants to release terrorists into the general population. That's what it means so Dingy Harry says we're not going to release them. The reporter says, "No, no, no, no: transfer them from prison at Gitmo to prison in America." Dingy Harry says, "You can't imprison them without releasing them," meaning you gotta release them from Gitmo and then catch 'em again! He said we're not going to do that, and he's also saying: Hey, if you're going to transfer them, you gotta release 'em from Gitmo, and you gotta put 'em in official transportation vehicles and put 'em back in prison. It is just hilarious. Normally these people are hilarious when they're out of power and dangerous when they're in power, and that hasn't changed. But they're getting funny now as the reality of what Obama claims he wants to do hits these people where it hurts: in the polls.

RUSH: I just got a note from Andrew McCarthy, who, as you know, was on the prosecution team that put the blind sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman, behind bars. He was listening to the program as we discussed the use of Gitmo by the Democrats as a propaganda tool, saying that our imprisonment of these innocent waifs has led to the creation of more terrorists. And Andy writes, "This drives me nuts. Obama, Durbin, Powell, the titular head of the Republican Party, McCain, a bunch of people who know zero about radical Islam, all say that Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and waterboarding and fill-in-the-blank has become an Al-Qaeda recruiting tool. This is something I know about, Rush. I prosecuted terrorists. I've interviewed them. I've infiltrated informants into terrorist networks. The biggest recruiting tool for terrorists is successful terrorist attacks. What draws those on the fence to the movement is the belief that it can and will win. When Osama and the blind sheik recruit, their pitch is that the US is the weak horse. If you make things bloody enough for us, we'll give up." Successful terror attacks are the number one recruitment tool. So you'd have to say that the Bush administration preventing all and any terrorist attacks on our soil did more to harm the recruitment of terrorists by Al-Qaeda than anything Obama or the Democrats have in mind.

RUSH: Federal Reserve. "The Federal Reserve Bank's latest forecasts for the US economy are gloomier than the ones released three months earlier with an expectation for higher unemployment and a steeper drop in economic activity. The Fed now says unemployment will be between 9.2% and 9.6%. The previous forecast was between 8.5% and 8.8%, and we're already at 8.9%." Ha-ha-ha. Well, I'm not laughing at that. I'm laughing at their bad prediction. "They say that the GDP will drop between 1.3% and 2%. The previous estimate was 0.5% to 1.3%." So their previous high is now their low and the GDP dropped.

Now, I have a question. And this is a question that's born of simple logic, ladies and gentlemen. How can economic forecasts...? Key word: "forecasts." How can economic forecasts get gloomier after the Porkulus bill and the Earmarkulus bill were passed and the bailout of the auto companies and shakin' it to the banks and taking it to AIG and "fixing" Wall Street? How can the forecasts get worse after all of these stimulants, these stimulants -- the make-work jobs, the shovel-ready jobs, the roads and bridge repair, all the repair work on the schools, all of the new jobs that are going to be "saved and created." How in the hell can that not be happening after all that we have stimulated this economy with? We have stimulated this economy so far to the tune of a $2 trillion deficit this year and a grand total of $11 trillion in deficits over the next ten-years if this stuff doesn't change. And we were told by Barack Obama that only government -- the government was the only entity that could -- fix this problem.

Obama and Pelosi and Dingy Harry and Barney Frank and Chris Dodd said that we had all the answers, that we can borrow and spend our way out of this. In fact, that's the only thing that we could do! The only solution we had was to borrow and spend our way out of it. So they spent all the money and then some, and things are getting worse and they're forecast gets worse? Okay, so let's add it up. This crowd was wrong about Iraq. They're wrong about Guantanamo Bay. They were wrong about General Petraeus. They were wrong that Americans want bigger government and higher taxes. The odds are that this bunch is wrong about the economy, too.

I still cringe when I think of Obama's commencement speeches. Shouldn't college graduates be encouraged to go out and create jobs, instead of working for nonprofits? Shouldn't college graduates be encouraged to go out and work and produce and lead the next generation to prosperity so that fewer and fewer freeloaders have to run around begging for grants? In fact, with the economy in the tank, not-for-profits will be not-in-existence if Obama gets his way much longer -- and the same thing for nonprofits, if the economy keeps tanking. How can the predictions get worse? And then I want to ask you a question. Every time President Obama goes out to talk about the economy when he talks about unemployment -- and I'm serious. I want you to think back in your memory.

As you've watched him talk about unemployment or all these economic woes, do you get the sense he really cares about it? See I don't. Do you get the feel he's really concerned, or is it just platitudinous speeches establishing an image of a wonderful utopia "down the road" if we pay the price now. I don't think he really cares. It's getting worse? There are ways, by the way. "Oh, what Mr. Limbaugh, would you have done differently to stop this?" I already announced it. There's a way to stop all of this right now. There's a way to bring it to a screeching halt and start the reversal toward growth -- and it's not complicated, but the problem is, it will not stimulate Barack Obama. And it won't stimulate Dingy Harry. And it won't stimulate Joe Biden. (Of course not much does.)

It won't stimulate Chris Dodd or Barney Frank. What has to happen here, folks, is you gotta turn the American people loose. You have got to remove on them the burdensome regulations and taxes that they face, employment taxes, investment taxes, capital gains taxes, corporate taxes. Reduce those, not increase them. You stop talking about nationalized health care in the midst of a giant economic downturn. You stop talking about all of these plans to nationalize this business and that business. And you turn the American people loose. It's the American people that make the US economy, not a bunch of politicians and arrogant egghead elites Central Planning things in Washington, DC.

Get this. You know, the cap-and-trade program -- the cap-and-tax program -- is called the Waxman-Markey bill. And this is horrible. You know, after you get through with Obama "fixing" the car business and this new $1,300 additional cost per car which is going to be much more than that by the time 2016 comes around -- and don't think you're going to save money on gasoline because you're using less, 'cause they're just going to have to raise the gas tax. The government never does with less. You're walking into tax increases if you do everything they tell you to do. You're just taking dead aim right into tax increase after tax increase -- and this cap and trade is even worse.

What it will do to your utility bill every month is double what's going to happen to the price of your little putt-putt car, your clown car that you're going to be forced to drive in. "Today, in anticipation of Friday's House Energy and Commerce Committee vote on the Waxman-Markey legislation," cap-and-tax, "the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) released a new study that determines the potential economic impacts of the federal cap-and-[tax] system outlined in the bill. Compiled by CRA International, the analysis determines that by 2030 the law would: reduce national GDP roughly $350 billion below the baseline level; cut net employment by 2.5 million jobs (even after accounting for new 'green' jobs); and reduce earnings for the average US worker by $390 per year."

This is the National Black Chamber of Commerce coming out against Obama's cap and tax. And while the Fed's reporting all these horrible forecasts for economic activity and unemployment, at the same time, "Some Federal Reserve officials are open to raising the amounts of mortgage and Treasury securities that will be purchased beyond the $1.75 trillion they've already committed to buying, according to minutes from the Fed's April meeting. Officials, meanwhile, projected an even deeper recession than they expected," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They want to buy even more mortgage and Treasury securities.

Now, you're supposed to look at this and say, "Oh, goody! Oh, goody! Oh, goody! They're going to secure it and they're going to take care of it. They're going to back it up." Let me tell you, is the housing business doing well right now? Who's been in charge of fixing it? Whatever these people in Washington tell you they're going to fix, is it worse? It is worse. Is it forecast to get worse? It is forecast to get worse! The housing market is forecast to get even worse than it is now, that we're nowhere near the bottom. But the Wizards of Smart, they're the ones fixing all this by buying up ever more of the private sector.

RUSH: You remember the Dubai Ports deal? You remember how the country just rose up in unified opposition to the Dubai Ports deal allowing the United Arab Emirates and a Dubai company, Dubai World Ports, whatever, to control several terminals, not full ports, but several terminals at US ports. I in fact found nothing wrong with it. They do it all over the world and they're very good at it. But the country wanted no part of it because, my gosh, these are Muslims, going to turn the ports over? Guess what deal President Obama just made today, actually announced it yesterday, at United Arab Emirates, which is where you find Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Barack Obama has made a deal to offer nuclear technology to the United Arab Emirates for the express purpose of the UAE only generating electricity to power their growing empire. It has rings of deals with North Korea, although I'm not equating the NorComs with the United Arab Emirates. My take on this is -- and, by the way, the United Arab Emirates is going to have to make promises that they will not enrich the uranium, the spent fuel rods that are used in all this into nuclear weapons. They'll have to promise it. That's not my focus. That's not my focus.

This is the way you need to look at it. While we are going to send expertise and materiel to help the United Arab Emirates go nuclear with their power, what the hell are we doing? We are looking into freaking windmills! We are examining freaking solar panels! We are in the process of trying to take out the coal industry! We are in the process of building little cars with propeller whirly birds on top that have no more power than a lawn mower! We are taking ourselves back to the freaking Stone Age when it comes to the generation of power and, meanwhile, we are helping the United Arab Emirates go nuclear with their power! I'm talking about generation of electricity. I'm not even talking weaponry here. We can't go nuclear. We can't do any more nuclear. It's shut down. But we're going to help the rest of the world do it? We're gonna give away our technology, or sell it or whatever we're going to do. Don't misunderstand, I got no problem with it. But at the same time I don't want to sit around and have to live in a country where I have to look at a windmill every damn day and hope and pray the wind's blowing just to be able to turn on a 40-watt fluorescent, compact, stupid, spaghetti lightbulb that's not enough light to do anything by!

RUSH: A statistic. In the past six years in the United States military there have been 3,444 combat deaths the last six years. I looked it up. CAFE standards, mileage standards, emissions standards for American automobiles kill 3,900 Americans per year. Five hundred more Americans die per year than combat deaths in six years because of CAFE standards. This is from CNBC: "The key to better mileage is lighter-weight cars -- in which people die more often in traffic accidents. Since CAFÉ passed in 1975, smaller cars have killed almost 50,000 more people than otherwise would have died on the roads, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration," which is an arm of our government. And that was in 2002. "CAFE kills up to 3,900 extra people each year, a study by Harvard and the Brookings Institution states. It finds that for every 100 pounds less that an auto weighs, up to 780 more people die in traffic accidents in a year."

Now, the liberals told us American deaths, not just combat, but American deaths since the war began March 19th of '03, 4,296, the combat deaths, 3,444, 3,900 deaths on the highways additional because of CAFE standards. Maybe the networks will start reading off the names of those Americans killed as a result of CAFE standards at the end of their broadcasts. CAFE standards that Barack Obama ordered as a commander-in-chief would order troops into battle. His decision, the car czar in chief, has just signed the death warrants of thousands and thousands of innocent Americans. I doubt families will get letters of condolence. You might say this is a sneak attack on the Social Security system. More people get killed in CAFE standard auto crashes, the less you'll have to pay out in the future.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. I'm so happy to speak to you. I've been trying to get through for a year and I really want to first apologize to you.

CALLER: Yes, because I'm a born-again conservative. I became a conservative on 9/12 -- well, actually the afternoon of 9/11. Before that I was a Kool-Aid drinking liberal. I grew up, my childhood, in New York City and it was, you know, in your mother's milk there. And --

CALLER: -- I was a teacher, a social studies teacher, history teacher, and I just kind of bought everything that was said about you until I started listening to you. I love you, Rush. You're a patriot.

CALLER: You are a hero. You're fighting the good fight. Every time I hear you savaged, you know, the whole thing about, oh, he hates -- I have never, in the years I've been listening to you, heard you say anything remotely hateful. You talk about issues, you talk about facts. You don't attack people as individuals. And I got great respect for you for that.

RUSH: Well, thank you very much. You know what, I'm glad you called and mentioned this because you are a great example or illustration of how the characterization of me in the media you used to frequent is all wrong, and it's personal, and it's distorted. And the purpose of it was to keep you from listening. It was to discredit me in your eyes so that you wouldn't listen. The reason those critics, the people that you responded to for a while don't want you listening is because they know the program's effective.

CALLER: Yes, and also, as a historian, I'm scared to death. I grew up during the Cold War with the duck-and-cover under the desks, and that was pretty scary. This is much more scary because I see patterns here. I'm not saying Obama is Hitler. But I see the patterns of fascism. It didn't take hold in Germany overnight. It was a slow process, took years.

RUSH: You're not the first to mention that, and people that mention it to me don't mention it so much in the context of Obama. The people that mention that similarity to me are concerned about the blindness of the American people who are falling for this. We've had people like Obama throughout the world history. We always thought Americans were a little bit more astute and observant. That's what alarms most people, the cult-like ability of the low process of political seduction that this guy succeeds with.

This is why the Wall Street Journal is doing so well; when you soak the rich, the rich leave:

Recent grads quite anxious about their futures (as Rush often says, “How is that hope and change working out for you?):

Bear in mind, more people will die on the road as we go to smaller cars; but, the environment is more important than people...

Since there are some links you may want to go back to from time-to-time, I am going to begin a list of them here. This will be a list to which I will add links each week.

Even though this group leans left, if you need to know what happened each day, and you are a busy person, here is where you can find the day’s news given in 100 seconds:

Conservative Review
Issue #76	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	May 24, 2009